material. With due rigour, Willelmus Sacrista, and his bibations
and _tacenda_ are, at the earliest opportunity, softly, yet
irrevocably put an end to. The bibations, namely, had to end;
even the building where they used to be carried on was razed from
the soil of St. Edmundsbury, and 'on its place grow rows of
beams:' Willelmus himself, deposed from the Sacristry and all
offices, retires into obscurity, into absolute taciturnity
unbroken thenceforth to this hour. Whether the poor Willelmus
did not still, by secret channels, occasionally get some slight
wetting of vinous or alcoholic liquor,--now grown, in a manner,
indispensable to the poor man? Jocelin hints not; one knows not
how to hope, what to hope! But if he did, it was in silence and
darkness; with an ever-present feeling that teetotalism was his
only true course.

Drunken dissolute Monks are a class of persons who had better
keep out of Abbot Samson's way. _Saevit ut lupus;_ was not the
Dream true! murmured many a Monk. Nay Ranulf de Glanville,
Justiciary in Chief, took umbrage at him, seeing these strict
ways; and watched farther with suspicion: but discerned
gradually that there was nothing wrong, that there was much the
opposite of wrong.




Chapter XI

The Abbot's Ways