church was set afire by lightning,
and the roof was cleft above, and certain persons were wounded, and some
were slain by this sudden mischance--in other parts also divers houses
were destroyed by fire. In Zwolle, after Mass, a mighty terror fell upon
them that were in the church, and the shutters were shaken from the
church windows by a lightning stroke. In the same year, on the day
following the Feast of St. Odulphus, and at the seventh hour when
Compline was done, died Brother Frederic, son of John, a Convert from
Groninghen. He was an aged man of about eighty years, and one of the
elders amongst them that first dwelt in this place. In many things he
was profitable to the Brothers, for he shaved their heads and blooded
them and dressed their wounds, and did other faithful service to the sick
and the plague stricken; at length, wearied with age and having a good
foundation of holy deeds, he fell asleep in the Lord. He came to Mount
St. Agnes to serve the Lord in the sixth year after the death of Master
Gerard Groote, with the first Brothers that dwelt here, and with those
very poor Lay folk, the disciples of Gerard, of whom I have written
above. He lived therefore in this place for sixty-six years, reckoning
the years of his conversion from the beginning thereof to the year of his
death inclusively, and Brother John Kempen, the first Prior of this
House, invested him as a Convert on the Feast of St. Katharine the
Virgin, in the year of the Lord 1401, he being the third of the Converts
then invested.

In the same year, on the Octave of the Holy Trinity, and on the night of
the Feast of the Saints Gervase and Protasius, died Brother Arnold, son
of Conrad of Nussia, being twenty-six years of age. He had been in the
priesthood for one year, and for nearly fifteen days had been sick of a
tertian fever, but God had pity on him that in a brief space he fulfilled
many years, and by the swiftness of his course escaped the hazardous
defilements of the world; now he had finished eight years in the
Religious Life.

In the year of the Lord 1447, on the day before the Feast of St. Agnes
the Virgin, two Clerks were invested, namely, Everard ter Huet of Zwolle
and James Spenghe of Utrecht.

In the same year the Clerks at Alberghen, near Oldenzale, received the
habit of Holy Religion in the Order of Canons Regular of St. Augustine,
and they were invested on the day of the Finding of the Holy Cross.

CHAPTER XXV.

How The