g Henry's courtiers, took no notice
of the mandate. King Henry sent a force to bring him, vi et armis, to
court. The earl made a resolute resistance, and put the king's force to
flight under a shower of arrows: an act which the courtiers declared to
be treason. At the same time, the abbot of Doncaster sued up the payment
of certain moneys, which the earl, whose revenue ran a losing race with
his hospitality, had borrowed at sundry times of the said abbot: for the
abbots and the bishops were the chief usurers of those days, and, as the
end sanctifies the means, were not in the least scrupulous of employing
what would have been extortion in the profane, to accomplish the pious
purpose of bringing a blessing on the land by rescuing it from the
frail hold of carnal and temporal into the firmer grasp of ghostly
and spiritual possessors. But the earl, confident in the number and
attachment of his retainers, stoutly refused either to repay the money,
which he could not, or to yield the forfeiture, which he would not: a
refusal which in those days was an act of outlawry in a gentleman, as
it is now of bankruptcy in a base mechanic; the gentleman having in our
wiser times a more liberal privilege of gentility, which enables him to
keep his land and laugh at his creditor. Thus the mutual resentments and
interests of the king and the abbot concurred to subject the earl to the
penalties of outlawry, by which the abbot would gain his due upon the
lands of Locksley, and the rest would be confiscate to the king. Still
the king did not think it advisable to assail the earl in his own
strong-hold, but caused a diligent watch to be kept over his motions,
till at length his rumoured marriage with the heiress of Arlingford
seemed to point out an easy method of laying violent hands on the
offender. Sir Ralph Montfaucon, a young man of good lineage and of an
aspiring temper, who readily seized the first opportunity that offered
of recommending himself to King Henry's favour by manifesting his zeal
in his service, undertook the charge: and how he succeeded we have seen.

Sir Ralph's curiosity was strongly excited by the friar's description
of the young lady of Arlingford; and he prepared in the morning to visit
the castle, under the very plausible pretext of giving the baron an
explanation of his intervention at the nuptials. Brother Michael and the
little fat friar proposed to be his guides. The proposal was courteously
accepted, and they set