Chapter V

Twelfth Century


Our Abbot being dead, the _Dominus Rex,_ Henry II, or Ranulf de
Glanvill _Justiciarius_ of England for him, set Inspectors or
Custodiars over us;--not in any breathless haste to appoint a new
Abbot, our revenues coming into his own Scaccarium, or royal
Exchequer, in the meanwhile. They proceeded with some rigour,
these Custodiars; took written inventories, clapt-on seals,
exacted everywhere strict tale and measure: but wherefore should
a living monk complain? The living monk has to do his devotional
drill-exercise; consume his allotted _pitantia,_ what we
call _pittance,_ or ration of victual; and possess his soul
in patience.

Dim, as through a long vista of Seven Centuries, dim and very
strange looks that monk-life to us; the ever-surprising
circumstance this, That it is a _fact_ and no dream, that we see
it there, and gaze into the very eyes of it! Smoke rises daily
from those culinary chimney-throats; there are living human
beings there, who chant, loud-braying, their matins, nones,
vespers; awakening echoes, not to the bodily ear alone. St.
Edmund's Shrine, perpetually illuminated, glows ruddy through
the Night, and through the Night of Centuries withal; St.
Edmundsbury Town paying yearly Forty pounds for that express end.
Bells clang out; on great occasions, all the bells. We have
Processions, Preachings, Festivals, Christmas Plays, _Mysteries_
shewn in the Churchyard, at which latter the Townsfolk sometimes