blood and brains, committing at once this horrible murder and triple sacrilege: first, in respect of the person; secondly, of the place; and thirdly, of the time and business then in hand. Yet vengeance seized not presently on their bodies, but tormented their souls upon the rack of desperation; so that neither trusting themselves one with another, nor the solitary woods, nor the mantle of night, they fled into several countries, where they all within four years after (as it is reported) died miserable fugitives, saith the story. Touching their issue, I find that Fitz-Urse fled into Ireland, and I heard there that the wild Irish, and rebellious, family of M'Mahunde, in the north parts, is of that lineage. The family of another of them is, at this day, prosecuted with a fable (if it be so) that continueth the memory of this impiety; for in Gloucestershire, it is yet reported that wheresoever any of them travelleth, the wind is commonly in their faces. The quadripartite history, called Quadrilogus, printed at Paris, A. D. 1495, saith, the murderers, after this horrible fact, rode that night to a manor of the archbishop's, named there (corruptly) Sumantingues, forty miles (leucas) distant from Canterbury ;* and that being men of great possessions, active soldiers, and in the strength of their age, yet now they became like men beside themselves, stupid, amazed, and distracted, repenting entirely of what 4 Lib. iii. c. 20. they had done, and for penance took their way to the Holy Land. But Sir William Tracy being come to the city of Cossantia in Sicily, and lingering there, fell into an horrible disease; so that the parts of his body rotted whilst he lived, and his flesh being dissolved by the putrefaction, himself did, by piecemeal, pull it off, and cast it away, leaving the sinews and bones apparent. In this misery this wretched murderer (as it was testified by the bishop of that city, who was then his confessor) ended his days, but very penitently. His other complices lived not long after, for all the four murderers were taken away within three years after the fact committed. SECTION III. A.D. 1199. IT appeareth by a MS. copy of Matthew Paris, which I have, (wanting much of that which is published, and having much which the published wanteth), that king Richard I. had spoiled some church of the chalice and treasure; and that it was thereupon conceived that the revengeful hand of God pursued him to his death. First, by tickling his covetous mind with the report of hidden treasure found by one Vidomer, a viscount of Bretagne, in France, which he (the king) claimed to belong to him by his prerogative: and then in stirring him to raise war against the viscount for it, and to besiege him in the castle and town of Chalus, in the country of Limosin, whither the viscount was fled and had H carried the treasure, as it were, to train the king to that fatal place, importing the name of a chalice. But here it so fell out, that the king being repelled in his assault, and surveying the ground for undermining the town walls, one Peter Basil struck him in the left arm, or about the shoulder, with a quarrel from a cross-bow, out of the castle. The king, little regarding his wound, pursued the siege, so as within twelve days he took the town, and found little treasure in it. But his wound, in the mean time, festering, deprived him of his life (April 9) in the tenth year of his reign, being about forty-four years old. Hereupon a satirist of that time wrote this tart distichon, related in the MS.5 Christe, Tui chalicis prædo fit præda Chalucis: He that did prey upon Thy chalices, Is now a prey unto the Chaluces; And thou, O Christ, rejectest him as dross, Giraldus Cambrensis, a good author, reporteth that one Hur, chaplain to William de Bruce, (a great lord in Wales in the time of king John) of his chapel of S. Nicholas, in the castle of Aberhodni, did dream in a night that one bid him tell his lord (that had taken away the land given in alms to that chapel, 5 MATT. PAR. * [We have here omitted a few paragraphs relating to king Edward I., which are repeated, in their proper place, further on.-EDD.] and presumed to detain it) that Hoc aufert fiscus quod non accipit Christus; dabis impio militi quod non vis dare sacerdoti. The king's exchequer shall take that from thee that thou wilt not suffer Christ to enjoy; and the impious soldier, that which thou wilt not permit unto the priest. The words are S. Austin's, spoken against them that invade tithes and church rights: and that which is there threatened against them, saith Giraldus, happened most certainly in a very short time to this withholder. For we have seen (saith he) in our own days, and found certainly by undoubted verity, that princes (and great men) usurpers of ecclesiastical possessions, and chiefly by name king Henry II., reigning in our time, and tainted above others with this vice, a little leaven corrupting the whole lump, and new evils falling thereby daily upon them, have consumed all their whole treasure, giving that unto the hired soldiers which they ought to have given unto the priest. He mentioneth not what it was particularly that happened to Bruce, but commiserating him as a singular good man, runneth out into a long commendation both of him and his wife. The rest, therefore, of this tragedy I must supply out of Matthew Paris, who in A.D. 1209 reporteth thus, that king John, doubting the fidelity of his nobles, sent a troop of soldiers to require of them their sons, or nephews, or near kinsmen for hostages. Coming to William Bruce's and demanding his sons, the lady Maud his wife, in the humour of a woman, preventing her husband, said "I will deliver no sons of mine to your king John, for that he beastly murdered his nephew Arthur, whom he ought to have preserved honourably." Her husband reproved her, and offered to submit himself to the trial of his peers if he had offended the king; but that would not serve. The king understanding it, sent his soldiers in all haste, as privily as he could to apprehend William de Bruce and his whole family; but he having intelligence of it, fled with his wife, children, and kinsmen, into Ireland; whither the king coming afterward, besieged his wife, and his son William with his wife, in a munition in Meath, and having taken them, they privily escaped to the island of May, where being again recovered and brought unto him, he now bound them surely, and sent them to Windsor castle, and there by his commandment they all died miserably famished. William himself, the father, escaping into France, died also shortly after, and was buried at Paris; leaving all, according to S. Austin's words, to the king's extortioners. What reax king John kept among churches, is generally well known; yet I find not that either he destroyed or profaned any of them, otherwise than by rifling of their wealth, and persecuting the clergy as his enemies. To say truth, they were not his friends. But the last riot that he committed among them was in Suffolk and Norfolk, as he brought his army that way to waste the lands of the barons his enemies, and to pass by the town of Lynn (which stood faithful to him |