the Vigil of the Apostles Peter and Paul; no
outgate on the morrow. Giving their promise not to depart
without permission, those four-and-twenty young bloods dieted all
that day (_manducaverunt_) with the Lord Abbot, waiting for trial
on the morrow. 'But after dinner,'--mark it, posterity!--'the
Lord Abbot retiring into his _Thalamus,_ they all started up, and
began caroling and singing (_carolare et cantare_); sending
into the Town for wine; drinking, and afterwards howling
(_ululantes_);--totally depriving the Abbot and Convent of their
afternoon's nap; doing all this in derision of the Lord Abbot,
and spending in such fashion the whole day till evening, nor
would they desist at the Lord Abbot's order! Night coming on,
they broke the bolts of the Town-Gates, and went off by
violence!' Was the like ever heard of? The roysterous young
dogs; caroling, howling, breaking the Lord Abbot's sleep,--after
that sinful chivalry cock-fight of theirs! They too are a
feature of distant centuries, as of near ones. St. Edmund on the
edge of your horizon, or whatever else there, young scamps, in
the dandy state, whether cased in iron or in whalebone, begin
to caper and carol on the green Earth! Our Lord Abbot
excommunicated most of them; and they gradually came in
for repentance.

Excommunication is a great recipe with our Lord Abbot; the
prevailing purifier in those ages. Thus when the Townsfolk and
Monks-menials quarreled once at the Christmas Mysteries in St.
Edmund's Churchyard, and 'from words it came to cuffs, and from
cuffs to cuttings and the effusion of blood,'--our Lord Abbot
excommunicates sixty of the rioters, with bell, book and candle
(_accensis candelis_), at one stroke. Whereupon they all come
suppliant, indeed nearly naked, 'nothing on but their breeches,
_omnino nudi praeter femoralia,_ and prostrate themselves at the
Church-door.' Figure that!

In fact, by excommunication or persuasion, by impetuosity of
driving or adroitness in leading, this Abbot, it is now becoming
plain everywhere, is a man that generally remains master at last.
He tempers his medicine to the malady, now hot, now cool;
prudent though fiery, an eminently practical man. Nay sometimes
in his adroit practice there are swift turns almost of a
surprising nature! Once, for example, it chanced that Geoffrey
Riddell Bishop of Ely, a Prelate rather troublesome to our Abbot,
made a request of him for timber from his woods towards c