al Jocelin), for the Town has yet no improved police.
Watch and ward nevertheless we do keep, and have Gates,--as what Town
must not; thieves so abounding; war, _werra_, such a frequent thing!
Our thieves, at the Abbot's judgment-bar, deny; claim wager of battle;
fight, are beaten, and _then_ hanged. 'Ketel, the thief,' took this
course; and it did nothing for him,--merely brought us, and indeed
himself, new trouble!

Everyway a most foreign Time. What difficulty, for example, has our
_Cellerarius_ to collect the _repselver_, 'reaping silver,' or penny,
which each householder is by law bound to pay for cutting down the
Convent grain! Richer people pretend that it is commuted, that it is
this and the other; that, in short, they will not pay it. Our
_Cellerarius_ gives up calling on the rich. In the houses of the poor,
our _Cellerarius_ finding, in like manner, neither penny nor good
promise, snatches, without ceremony, what _vadium_ (pledge, _wad_) he
can come at: a joint-stool, kettle, nay the very house-door,
'_hostium_;' and old women, thus exposed to the unfeeling gaze of the
public, rush out after him with their distaffs and the angriest
shrieks: '_vetulae exibant cum colis suis_,' says Jocelin, '_minantes
et exprobrantes_.'

What a historical picture, glowing visible, as St. Edmund's Shrine by
night, after Seven long Centuries or so! _Vetulae cum colis_: My
venerable ancient spinning grandmothers,--ah, and ye too have to
shriek, and rush out with your distaffs; and become Female Chartists,
and scold all evening with void doorway;--and in old Saxon, as we in
modern, would fain demand some Five-point Charter, could it be
fallen-in with, the Earth being too tyrannous!--Wise Lord Abbots,
hearing of such phenomena, did in time abolish or commute the
reap-penny, and one nuisance was abated. But the image of these justly
offended old women, in their old wool costumes, with their angry
features, and spindles brandished, lives forever in the historical
memory. Thanks to thee, Jocelin Boswell. Jerusalem was taken by the
Crusaders, and again lost by them; and Richard Coeur-de-Lion 'veiled
his face' as he passed in sight of it: but how many other things went
on, the while!

Thus, too, our trouble with the Lakenheath eels is very great. King
Knut namely, or rather his Queen who also did herself honour by
honouring St. Edmund, decreed by authentic deed yet extant on
parchment, that the Holders of the Town Fields, once Beodri