nstantly laid guilds on the towns, and called it
"tenserie"; and when the wretched men had no more to give, then
they plundered and burned all the towns; that well thou mightest
go a whole day's journey and never shouldest thou find a man
sitting in a town, nor the land tilled. Then was corn dear, and
flesh, and cheese, and butter; for none was there in the land.
Wretched men starved of hunger. Some had recourse to alms, who
were for a while rich men, and some fled out of the land. Never
yet was there more wretchedness in the land; nor ever did heathen
men worse than they did: for, after a time, they spared neither
church nor churchyard, but took all the goods that were therein,
and then burned the church and all together. Neither did they
spare a bishop's land, or an abbot's, or a priest's, but
plundered both monks and clerks; and every man robbed another who
could. If two men, or three, came riding to a town, all the
township fled for them, concluding them to be robbers. The
bishops and learned men cursed them continually, but the effect
thereof was nothing to them; for they were all accursed, and
forsworn, and abandoned. To till the ground was to plough the
sea: the earth bare no corn, for the land was all laid waste by
such deeds; and they said openly, that Christ slept, and his
saints. Such things, and more than we can say, suffered we
nineteen winters for our sins. In all this evil time held Abbot
Martin his abbacy twenty years and a half, and eight days, with
much tribulation; and found the monks and the guests everything
that behoved them; and held much charity in the house; and,
notwithstanding all this, wrought on the church, and set thereto
lands and rents, and enriched it very much, and bestowed
vestments upon it. And he brought them into the new minster on
St. Peter's mass-day with much pomp; which was in the year, from
the incarnation of our Lord, 1140, and in the twenty-third from
the destruction of the place by fire. And he went to Rome, and
there was well received by the Pope Eugenius; from whom he
obtained their privileges:--one for all the lands of the abbey,
and another for the lands that adjoin to the churchyard; and, if
he might have lived longer, so he meant to do concerning the
treasury. And he got in the lands that rich men retained by main
strength. Of William Malduit, who held the castle of Rockingham,
he won Cotingham and Easton; and of Hugh de Walteville, he won
Hirtlingbury a