airs temporal, while from walls and roof hung the arms of the
warriors, harmoniously mingled with the emblems of the church. It was a
picture of the marriage of church and state well worthy of reproduction
on canvas.

Yet King William knew how to deal with Abbot Thurston. Lands belonging
to the monastery lay beyond the fens, and on these the king laid the
rough hand of royal right, as an earnest of what would happen when the
monastery itself should fall into his hands. A flutter of terror shook
the hearts of the abbot and his family of monks. To them it seemed that
the skies were about to fall, and that they would be wise to stand from
under.

While the monks of Ely were revolving this threat of disaster in their
souls, the tide of assault and defence rolled on. William's causeway
pushed its slow length forward through the fens. Hereward assailed it
with fire and sword, and harried the king's lands outside by sudden
raids. It is said that, like King Alfred before him, he more than once
visited the camp of the Normans in disguise, and spied out their ways
and means of warfare.

There is a story connected with this warlike enterprise so significant
of the times that it must be told. Whether or not William believed
Hereward to be an enchanter, he took steps to defeat enchantment, if any
existed. An old woman, who had the reputation of being a sorceress, was
brought to the royal camp, and her services engaged in the king's cause.
A wooden tower was built, and pushed along the causeway in front of the
troops, the old woman within it actively dispensing her incantations and
calling down the powers of witch-craft upon Hereward's head.
Unfortunately for her, Hereward tried against her sorcery of the
broomstick the enchantment of the brand, setting fire to the tower and
burning it and the sorceress within it. We could scarcely go back to a
later date than the eleventh century to find such an absurdity as this
possible, but in those days of superstition even such a man as William
the Conqueror was capable of it.

How the contest would have ended had treason been absent it is not easy
to say. As it was, Abbot Thurston and his monks brought the siege to a
sudden and disastrous end. They showed the king a secret way of approach
to the island, and William's warriors took the camp of Hereward by
surprise. What followed scarcely needs the telling. A fierce and sharp
struggle, men falling and dying in scores, William's heavy-armed