Page:William of Malmesbury's Chronicle.djvu/515

 introduced by the sheriffs, or any one else. I will observe the good and ancient laws, and just customs, in murders, pleas, and other causes, and I command and appoint them to be so observed. Done at Oxford, 1136, in the first year of my reign."

The names of the witnesses, who were numerous, I disdain to particularize, because he as basely perverted almost every thing, as if he had sworn only that he might manifest himself a violator of his oath to the whole kingdom. This easy man must pardon me for speaking the truth; who, had he entered on the sovereignty lawfully, and not given a ready ear to the insinuations of the malevolent in the administration of it, would have wanted little in any princely quality. Under him, therefore, the treasures of several churches were pillaged, and their landed possessions given to laymen; the churches of the clergy were sold to foreigners; the bishops made captive, or forced to alienate their property; the abbeys given to improper persons, either through the influence of friendship, or for the discharge of debts. Still I think such transactions are not so much to be ascribed to him as to his advisers; who persuaded him, that, he ought never to want money, so long as the monasteries were stored with treasure.

In the year of our Lord 1137, in the beginning of Lent, the king crossed the sea. The earl, too, having thoroughly sounded, and discovered the inclinations of such as he knew to be tenacious of their plighted oath, and arranged what he conceived proper to be done afterwards, himself embarked on Easter-day, and prosperously reached the continent. Not long after, he had very nearly experienced the malignity of adverse fortune: for the king endeavoured to intercept him by treachery, at the instigation of one William de Ipres. The earl, however, informed of it by one of the accomplices, avoided the snare prepared for him, and absented himself from the palace, whither he was repeatedly invited, for several days. The king, troubled at having succeeded so little by his artifices, and thinking to effect his design by cunning, endeavoured, by a serene countenance and unrequired confession, to extenuate the enormity of his crime. He swore, in words framed at the earl's pleasure, never again to give countenance to such an outrage: and still more