ushed again on the abbey. For
four November days the work of destruction went on unhindered, whilst
gate, stables, granaries, kitchen, infirmary, hostelry, went up in
flames. From the wreck of the abbey itself the great multitude swept
away too the granges and barns of the abbey farms. The monks had become
vast agricultural proprietors: 1,000 horses, 120 oxen, 200 cows, 300
bullocks, 300 hogs, 10,000 sheep were driven off for spoil, and as a
last outrage, the granges and barns were burnt to the ground. L60,000,
the justiciaries afterwards decided, would hardly cover the loss.

Weak as was the government of Mortimer and Isabella, there never was a
time in English history when government stood with folded hands before a
scene such as this. The appeal of the abbot was no longer neglected; a
royal force quelled the riot and exacted vengeance for this breach of
the King's peace. Thirty carts full of prisoners were despatched to
Norwich; twenty-four of the chief townsmen, thirty-two of the village
priests, were convicted as aiders and abettors. Twenty were at once
summarily hung. But with this first vigorous effort at repression the
danger seemed again to roll away. Nearly 200 persons remained indeed
under sentence of outlawry, and for five weary years their case dragged
on in the King's courts. At last matters ended in a lawless, ludicrous
outrage. Out of patience and irritated by repeated breaches of promise
on the abbot's part, the outlawed burgesses seized him as he lay in his
manor of Chevington, robbed, bound and shaved him, and carried him off
to London. There he was hurried from street to street, lest his
hiding-place should be detected, till opportunity offered for his
shipping off to Brabant. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Pope himself,
levelled their excommunications against the perpetrators of this daring
outrage in vain.

The prison of their victim was at last discovered; he was released and
brought home. But the lesson seems to have done good. The year 1332 saw
a concordat arranged between the Abbey and Town. The damages assessed by
the royal justiciaries, a sum enormous now but incredible then, were
remitted, the outlawry was reversed, the prisoners were released. On the
other hand, the deeds were again replaced in the archives of the abbey,
and the charters which had been extorted from the trembling monks were
formally cancelled. In other words, the old process of legal oppression
was left to go on. The sp