particularly that of the saints' intercession; and living in an
age overrun with superstition, he went so far into the other extreme, as
to be censured for an atheist. The day before his death, a monk relating
a terrible dream, which seemed to forebode him some misfortune, the King
being told the matter, turned it into a jest; said, "The man was a monk,
and dreamt like a monk, for lucre sake;" and therefore commanded
Fitzhamon to give him an hundred shillings, that he might not complain
he had dreamt to no purpose.

His vices appear to have been rather derived from the temper of his
body, than any original depravity of his mind; for being of a sanguine
complexion, wholly bent upon his pleasures, and prodigal in his nature,
he became engaged in great expenses. To supply these, the people were
perpetually oppressed with illegal taxes and exactions; but that sort of
avarice which arises from prodigality and vice, as it is always needy,
so it is much more ravenous and violent than the other, which put the
King and his evil instruments (among whom Ralph, Bishop of Durham, is of
special infamy) upon those pernicious methods of gratifying his
extravagances by all manner of oppression; whereof some are already
mentioned, and others are too foul to relate.

He is generally taxed by writers for discovering a contempt of religion
in his common discourse and behaviour; which I take to have risen from
the same fountain, being a point of art, and a known expedient, for men
who cannot quit their immoralities, at least to banish all reflections
that may disturb them in the enjoyment, which must be done either by not
thinking of religion at all; or, if it will obtrude, by putting it out
of countenance.

Yet there is one instance that might shew him to have some sense of
religion as well as justice. When two monks were outvying each other in
canting[16] the price of an abbey, he observed a third at some distance,
who said never a word; the King demanded why he would not offer; the
monk said, he was poor, and besides, would give nothing if he were ever
so rich; the King replied, "Then you are the fittest person to have it,"
and immediately gave it him. But this is, perhaps with reason enough,
assigned more to caprice than conscience; for he was under the power of
every humour and passion that possessed him for the present; which made
him obstinate in his resolves, and unsteady in the prosecution.

[Footnote 16: An Irish phrase for sel