Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/620

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what they scrupled at was the deliberate perversion of formal justice to crush a single man who claimed their reverence on every ground, official and personal. The prelates, on the other hand, might be ready for any amount of cringing and cowardice, and might yet shrink from being made the agents of direct oppression in their own persons. Anyhow another means of payment was suggested by the cunning agents of the impious King. It may have been the future Bishop of Durham who answered, "Have ye not chests full of the bones of dead men, but wrought about with gold and silver?" In this strait the churchmen took the sacrilegious hint. The most sacred objects were not spared; books of the gospels, shrines, crucifixes, were spoiled of their precious ornaments, chalices were melted down, all the gifts of the bounty of the old time were seized on, not to relieve the poor, but to fill the coffers of the King with the money that was needed for his ambitious schemes.

In all this we have learned to suspect some exaggeration; extreme measures taken at some particular places must have been spoken of as if they had been universal throughout the land. In one case, and that the case of the highest personal interest, we get the details, and they are a good deal less frightful than the general picture. Among the other great men of the land, the Archbishop of Canterbury was called on for his contribution. His friends advised compliance with the request, and he himself did not complain of it as