eir wrong. "Had Kebel been a
dweller within the borough," said the burgesses, "he would have got his
acquittal from the oaths of his neighbours, as our liberty is." The
scandal at last moved the convent itself to action. The monks were
divided in opinion, but the saner part determined that their tenants
"should enjoy equal liberty" with the townsmen. The cellarer's court was
abolished; the franchise of the town was extended to the rural
possessions of the abbey; the farmers "came to the toll-house, and were
written in the alderman's roll, and paid the town-penny."

A moral revolution like this is notable at any time, but a change
wrought avowedly "that all might enjoy equal liberty" is especially
notable in the twelfth century. Cases like Kebel's were everywhere
sounding the knell of feudal privilege and of national division, long
before freedom fronted John by the sedges of Runnymede. Slowly and
fitfully through the reign of his father the new England which had grown
out of conquered and conquerors woke to self-consciousness. It was this
awakening that Abbot Sampson saw and noted with his clear, shrewd eyes.
To him, we can hardly doubt, the revolt of the town-wives, for instance,
was more than a mere scream of angry women. The "rep-silver," the
commutation for that old service of reaping in the abbot's fields, had
ceased to be exacted from the richer burgesses. At last the poorer sort
refused to pay. Then the cellarer's men came seizing gate and stool by
way of distress till the women turning out, distaff in hand, put them
ignominiously to flight. Sampson had his own thoughts about the matter,
saw perhaps that the days of inequality were over, that in the England
that was coming there would be one law for rich and poor. At any rate he
quietly compromised the question for twenty shillings a year.

The convent was indignant. "Abbot Ording, who lies there," muttered an
angry monk, as he pointed to the tomb in the choir, "would not have done
this for five hundred marks of silver." That their abbot should
capitulate to a mob of infuriated town-wives was too much for the
patience of the brotherhood. All at once they opened their eyes to the
facts which had been going on unobserved for so many long years. There
was their own town growing, burgesses encroaching on the market space,
settlers squatting on their own acre with no leave asked, aldermen who
were once only the abbey servants taking on themselves to give
permission f