w.
Without a doubt the Kern guided him faithfully.

For the Queen, having news that the King was nearly come within a day's
journey, rode out towards the north to meet him. And as she went along
the road, she saw, upon a hillside not very far away, a man that sat
upon a dead horse, beating it and tugging at its bridle. Beside him
stood a countryman, in a garment of furs and pelts, with rawhide boots.
She had a great many men and ladies riding behind her, and she had come
as far as she was minded to go. So she reined in her horse and sent two
prickers to ask who these men were.

And when she heard that this was a traveller, robbed of all his money
and insensate, and his poor guide who knew nothing of who he might be,
she turned her cavalcade back and commanded that the traveller should be
borne to the castle on a litter of boughs and there attended to and
comforted until again he could take the road. And she made occasion upon
this to comment how ill it was for travellers that the old monasteries
were done away with. For in the old time there were seven monasteries
between there and Durham, wherein poor travellers might lodge. Then, if
a merchant were robbed upon the highways, he could be housed at
convenient stages on his road home, and might afterwards send recompense
to the good fathers or not as he pleased or was able. Now, there was no
harbourage left on all that long road, and, but for the grace of God,
that pitiful traveller might have lain there till the ravens picked out
his eyes.

And some commended the Queen's words and actions, and some few, behind
their hands, laughed at her for her soft heart. And the more Lutheran
sort said that it was God's mercy that the old monasteries were gone;
for they had, they said, been the nests for lowsels, idle wayfarers,
palmers, pilgrims, and the like. And, praise God, since that clearance
fourteen thousand of these had been hanged by the waysides for sturdy
rogues, to the great purging of the land.

II

In the part of Lincolnshire that is a little to the northeastward of
Stamford was a tract of country that had been granted to the monks of St
Radigund's at Dover by William the Conqueror. These monks had drained
this land many centuries before, leaving the superintendence of the work
at first to priors by them appointed, and afterwards, when the dykes,
ditches, and flood walls were all made, to knights and poor gentlemen,
their tenants, who farmed the land and kept up