am St. Genevieve.'

Much passes away into oblivion: this glorious victory over the
Flemings at Fornham has, at the present date, greatly dimmed itself
out of the minds of men. A victory and battle nevertheless it was, in
its time: some thrice-renowned Earl of Leicester, not of the De
Montfort breed (as may be read in Philosophical and other Histories,
could any human memory retain such things), had quarrelled with his
sovereign, Henry Second of the name; had been worsted, it is like, and
maltreated, and obliged to fly to foreign parts; but had rallied there
into new vigour; and so, in the year 1173, returns across the German
Sea with a vengeful army of Flemings. Returns, to the coast of
Suffolk; to Framlingham Castle, where he is welcomed; westward towards
St. Edmundsbury and Fornham Church, where he is met by the constituted
authorities with _posse comitatus_; and swiftly cut in pieces, he and
his, or laid by the heels; on the right bank of the obscure river
Lark,--as traces still existing will verify.

For the river Lark, though not very discoverably, still runs or
stagnates in that country; and the battle-ground is there; serving at
present as a pleasure-ground to his Grace of Northumberland. Copper
pennies of Henry II. are still found there;--rotted out from the
pouches of poor slain soldiers, who had not had _time_ to buy liquor
with them. In the river Lark itself was fished up, within man's
memory, an antique gold ring; which fond Dilettantism can almost
believe may have been the very ring Countess Leicester threw away, in
her flight, into that same Lark river or ditch.[5] Nay, few years ago,
in tearing out an enormous superannuated ash-tree, now grown quite
corpulent, bursten, superfluous, but long a fixture in the soil, and
not to be dislodged without revolution,--there was laid bare, under
its roots, 'a circular mound of skeletons wonderfully complete,' all
radiating from a centre, faces upwards, feet inwards; a 'radiation'
not of Light, but of the Nether Darkness rather; and evidently the
fruit of battle; for 'many of the heads were cleft, or had arrow-holes
in them,' The Battle of Fornham, therefore, is a fact, though a
forgotten one; no less obscure than undeniable,--like so many other
facts.

* * * * *

Like the St. Edmund's Monastery itself! Who can doubt, after what we
have said, that there was a Monastery here at one time? No doubt at
all there was a Monastery here; no