wed and encompassed, as it still ought and must,
all earthly Business whatsoever.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] _Jocelini Chronica_, pp. 39, 40.

[18] Ibid. p. 71.

CHAPTER XIV.

HENRY OF ESSEX.

Of St. Edmund's fearful avengements have they not the remarkablest
instance still before their eyes? He that will go to Reading Monastery
may find there, now tonsured into a mournful penitent Monk, the once
proud Henry Earl of Essex; and discern how St. Edmund punishes
terribly, yet with mercy! This Narrative is too significant to be
omitted as a document of the Time. Our Lord Abbot, once on a visit at
Reading, heard the particulars from Henry's own mouth; and thereupon
charged one of his monks to write it down;--as accordingly the Monk
has done, in ambitious rhetorical Latin; inserting the same, as
episode, among Jocelin's garrulous leaves. Read it here; with ancient
yet with modern eyes.

* * * * *

Henry Earl of Essex, standard-bearer of England, had high places and
emoluments; had a haughty high soul, yet with various flaws, or rather
with one many-branched flaw and crack, running through the texture of
it. For example, did he not treat Gilbert de Cereville in the most
shocking manner? He cast Gilbert into prison; and, with chains and
slow torments, wore the life out of him there. And Gilbert's crime was
understood to be only that of innocent Joseph: the Lady Essex was a
Potiphar's Wife, and had accused poor Gilbert! Other cracks, and
branches of that wide-spread flaw in the Standard-bearer's soul we
could point out: but indeed the main stem and trunk of all is too
visible in this, That he had no right reverence for the Heavenly in
Man,--that far from showing due reverence to St. Edmund, he did not
even show him common justice. While others in the Eastern Counties
were adorning and enlarging with rich gifts St. Edmund's
resting-place, which had become a city of refuge for many things, this
Earl of Essex flatly defrauded him, by violence or quirk of law, of
five shillings yearly, and converted said sum to his own poor uses!
Nay, in another case of litigation, the unjust Standard-bearer, for
his own profit, asserting that the cause belonged not to St. Edmund's
Court, but to _his_ in Lailand Hundred, 'involved us in travellings
and innumerable expenses, vexing the servants of St. Edmund for a long
tract of time.' In short, he is without reverence for the Heavenly,
this Standard-bearer; re