You shall faithfully do this in remembrance that you did most
cruelly slay me; and that you may the better call to God for mercy,
repent unfeignedly for your sins, and do good works, the officers of
Eskdale-side shall blow, Out on you, out on you, out on you, for
this heinous crime. If you or your successors shall refuse this
service, so long as it shall not be full sea at the aforesaid hour,
you or yours shall forfeit your lands to the Abbot of Whitby, or his
successors. This I intreat, and earnestly beg that you may have
lives and goods preserved for this service; and I request of you to
promise by your parts in heaven that it shall be done by you and
your successors, as it is aforesaid requested, and I will confirm it
by the faith of an honest man.' Then the hermit said: 'My soul
longeth for the Lord, and I do as freely forgive these men my death
as Christ forgave the thieves upon the cross;' and in the presence
of the abbot and the rest he said, moreover, these words: 'Into thy
hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit, for from the bonds of death Thou
hast redeemed me, O Lord of truth. Amen.' So he yielded up the
ghost the eighth day of December, A.D. 1160, upon whose soul God
have mercy. Amen."



ANCHORITES, STRICTLY SO CALLED



The fertile and peaceable lowlands of England, as I have just said,
offered few spots sufficiently wild and lonely for the habitation of
a hermit; those, therefore, who wished to retire from the world into
a more strict and solitary life than that which the monastery