the kings of England maintained this branch of their prerogative;
but menaces and remonstrances were thrown away on the earl,
who declared that he would not thank Saint Peter for admission
into Paradise, if he were obliged to leave his bow and hounds
at the gate. King Henry (the Second) swore by Saint Botolph
to make him rue his sport, and, having caused him to be duly
and formally accused, summoned him to London to answer the charge.
The earl, deeming himself safer among his own vassals than
among king Henry's courtiers, took no notice of the mandate.
King Henry sent a force to bring him, vi et armis, to court.
The earl made a resolute resistance, and put the king's force
to flight under a shower of arrows: an act which the courtiers
declared to be treason. At the same time, the abbot of Doncaster
sued up the payment of certain moneys, which the earl,
whose revenue ran a losing race with his hospitality,
had borrowed at sundry times of the said abbot: for the abbots
and the bishops were the chief usurers of those days, and,
as the end sanctifies the means, were not in the least scrupulous
of employing what would have been extortion in the profane,
to accomplish the pious purpose of bringing a blessing on the land
by rescuing it from the frail hold of carnal and temporal
into the firmer grasp of ghostly and spiritual possessors.
But the earl, confident in the number and attachment of
his retainers, stoutly refused either to repay the money,
which he could not, or to yield the forfeiture, which he would not:
a refusal which in those days was an act of outlawry in a gentleman,
as it is now of bankruptcy in a base mechanic; the gentleman
having in our wiser times a more liberal privilege of gentility,
which enables him to keep his land and laugh at his creditor.
Thus the mutual resentments and interests of the king and the abbot