a wise and sharp man, and so treats the people reasonably,
_tractat homines pacifice.'_ Whereat the Lord Abbot _factus est
hilaris,_--could not but take a triumphant laugh for himself;
and determines to leave that Harlow manor yet unmeddled with, for
a while.

A brave man, strenuously fighting, fails not of a little triumph,
now and then, to keep him in heart. Everywhere we try at least
to give the adversary as good as he brings; and, with swift
force or slow watchful manoeuvre, extinguish this and the other
solecism, leave one solecism less in God's Creation; and so
_proceed_ with our battle, not slacken or surrender in it! The
Fifty feudal Knights; for example, were of unjust greedy temper,
and cheated us, in the Installation-day, of ten knights'-fees;--
but they know now whether that has profited them aught, and I
Jocelin know. Our Lord Abbot for the moment had to endure it,
and say nothing; but he watched his time.

Look also how my Lord of Clare, coming to claim his undue 'debt'
in the Court at Witham, with barons and apparatus, gets a Rowland
for his Oliver! Jocelin shall report: 'The Earl, crowded round
(_constipatus_) with many barons and men at arms, Earl Alberic
and others standing by him, said, "That his bailiffs had given
him to understand they were wont annually to receive for his
behoof, from the Hundred of Risebridge and the bailiffs thereof,
a sum of five shillings, which sum was now unjustly held back;"
and he alleged farther that his predecessors had been infeft, at
the Conquest, in the lands of Alfric son of Wisgar, who was Lord
of that Hundred, as may be read in Domesday Book by all persons.
--The Abbot, reflecting for a moment, without stirring from his