, extinguish this and the other
solecism, leave one solecism less in God's Creation; and so
_proceed_ with our battle, not slacken or surrender in it! The
Fifty feudal Knights; for example, were of unjust greedy temper,
and cheated us, in the Installation-day, of ten knights'-fees;--
but they know now whether that has profited them aught, and I
Jocelin know. Our Lord Abbot for the moment had to endure it,
and say nothing; but he watched his time.

Look also how my Lord of Clare, coming to claim his undue 'debt'
in the Court at Witham, with barons and apparatus, gets a Rowland
for his Oliver! Jocelin shall report: 'The Earl, crowded round
(_constipatus_) with many barons and men at arms, Earl Alberic
and others standing by him, said, "That his bailiffs had given
him to understand they were wont annually to receive for his
behoof, from the Hundred of Risebridge and the bailiffs thereof,
a sum of five shillings, which sum was now unjustly held back;"
and he alleged farther that his predecessors had been infeft, at
the Conquest, in the lands of Alfric son of Wisgar, who was Lord
of that Hundred, as may be read in Domesday Book by all persons.
--The Abbot, reflecting for a moment, without stirring from his
place, made answer: "A wonderful deficit, my Lord Earl, this
that thou mentionest! King Edward gave to St. Edmund that entire
Hundred, and confirmed the same with his Charter; nor is there
any mention there of those five shillings. It will behove thee
to say, for what service, or on what ground, thou exactest those
five shillings." Whereupon the Earl, consulting with his
followers, replied, That he had to carry the Banner of St. Edmund
in war-time, and for this duty the five shillings were his. To
which the Abbot: "Certainly, it seems inglorious, if so great a
man, Earl of Clare no less, receive so small a gift for such a
service. To the Abbot of St. Edmund's it is no unbearable burden
to give five shillings. But Roger Earl Bigot holds himself duly
seised, and asserts that he by such seisin has the office of
carrying St. Edmund's Banner; and he did carry it when the Earl
of Leicester and his Flemings were beaten at Fornham. Then again
Thomas de Mendham says that the right is his. When you have made
out with one another, that this right is thine, come then and
claim the five shillings, and I will promptly pay them!"
Whereupon the Earl said, He would speak with Earl Roger his
relative; and so the matte