ds, which must have considerably
heightened his temperature. He explained to them with placid face that
the scourge of the Lord was sweet to His servants, and what he said he
enacted. "But He, the head Father of the Family, who had put forth His
hand to cut him down, withdrew not the sickle from reaping the stalk,
which he had now seen white to the harvest." One of the signs of this
was the growing dimness of his eyes, much tried by the dust and heat of
travel. But he would not have them doctored. "These eyes will be good
enough for us as long as we are obliged to use them," he said. He
crawled painfully on to London, part of the way on horseback and part by
water, and in a high fever took to his bed in his own house, praying to
be allowed to reach his anxious family at Lincoln. "I shall never be
able to keep away from spiritual presence with our dearest Sons in
Christ, whether I be present or absent in the body. But concerning
health or my bodily presence, yea, and concerning my whole self, may the
will be done of the holy Father which is in Heaven." He had ceased to
wish to live, he told his chaplain, for he saw the lamentable things
about to come upon the Church of England. "So it is better for us to die
than to live and see the evil things for this people and the saints
which are ahead. For doubtless upon the family of King Henry the
scripture must needs be fulfilled which says there shall not be 'deep
rooting from bastard slips' and the 'seed of an unrighteous bed shall be
rooted out.' So the modern King of the French will avenge his holy
father Lewis upon the offspring of wickedness, to wit, of her who
rejected a stainless bed with him and impudently was joined with his
rival, the king of the English. For this, that French Philip will
destroy the stock royal of the English, like as an ox is wont to lick up
the grass to its roots. Already three of her sons have been cut off by
the French, two kings that is, and one prince. The fourth, the survivor,
will have short peace at their hands." The next day, St. Matthew's, was
his episcopal birthday, and he kept it up by having, for the first time
in his life, the anointing of the sick. He first made a most searching
confession to his chaplain, and then to the Dean of Lincoln, the
Precentor, and the Archdeacon of Northampton.{29} He hesitated not to
confess sins often before confessed to many, and made so straight, keen,
and full a story of what he had left undone and what h