ourne, but had been taken prisoner and only released
after paying a large ransom. When dismissed there seems to have been
something in the nature of an undertaking that the Abbot would not again
fight against Hereward; but as soon as he was free he organised fresh
attacks, obliging all the tenants of the abbey to supply assistance. In
revenge for this Hereward went with his men to Burgh, and laid waste the
whole town with fire, plundered all the treasure of the church, and
destroyed all the buildings of the abbey except the church itself.

Though Hereward spared the church and went away, yet very soon
afterwards the monks, possibly sympathising more with Hereward than with
their Norman Abbot (who had left them for a time), allowed themselves to
indulge in a drunken revel; and while carousing, a fire seized upon the
church and other remaining buildings, from which Gunton says they
rescued only a few relics, and little else. But, as Mr Poole has well
observed[7], "we must receive such accounts with some allowance; and, in
fact, neither was the abbey so despoiled, nor the church so destroyed,
but that there was wealth enough to tempt robbers in the next abbacy,
and fuel enough for another conflagration." The robbers in question were
foreigners who got into the church by a ladder over the altar of SS.
Philip and James, one of them standing with a drawn sword over the
sleeping sacrist. The plunder they carried off was valuable, but it was
recovered when the thieves were overtaken. The King, though he may have
punished the robbers, retained the goods so that they were never
restored to the abbey.

That Ernulf (1107-1114) should not have done anything towards improving
the church is a fact that speaks as plainly as possible of its being
already in good condition. Had there been anything like the desolation
that some accounts pretend, Ernulf would have spared no exertions in his
endeavours to put things right. He came from Canterbury, where he was
Prior, and where he had already distinguished himself as a zealous
builder; but all that is recorded as due to him at Burgh is the
completion of some unfinished buildings, the dormitory, the refectory,
and the chapter-house. We may feel confident therefore that the Saxon
Church built by Ethelwold remained substantially as first erected until
the time of Ernulf's successor; and that the remains to be seen to this
day were in their present position when Edgar and Dunstan visited the
pl