File:The greater abbeys of England (1908) (14804913643).jpg

Identifier: greaterabbeysofe01gasq (find matches)
Title: The greater abbeys of England
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Gasquet, Francis Aidan, 1846-1929
Subjects: Abbeys
Publisher: New York, Dodd, Mead and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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the body oftheir patron St. Guthlac with his psalter and whip, whichis called elsewhere St. Bartholomews whip and is repre-sented on the arms of the abbey, and hid them in AncarigWood, where there was a hermitage. The plate andaltarpiece were then let down into the well of the cloister;but the latter, which was much prized as being the giftof King Witlaf fifty years before, and which possiblymay have been ^ the golden veil embroidered with thefall of Troy, specially spoken of, would not sink, and washanded over to the charge of the abbot and some seniors.Thirty monks remained behind in the monastery and con-tinued to carry out their duties as before, until just asMass was over the Danes broke into the church wherethey were. Oskitel, the Danish king, murdered the abbotwith his own hands, and the rest of the monks were tor-tured to make them reveal the place where the churchtreasure was hidden, and as they refused they were putto death in various places of the establishment. Asker, (80)
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CROWLAND the prior, for instance, was slaughtered in the sacristy;Lethwyn, the sub-prior, in the refectory, and one only oftheir number, Turgar, a boy of ten years, was spared. Allthe tombs were broken open in the hope of discoveringthe buried treasures, which, however, were not found.Being disappointed of their object, the barbarians laid thebodies of the murdered monks in a heap and setting fireto them burnt as their funeral pyre the church and mo-nastic buildings on August 28, 870, three days after theirarrival at Crowland. After leaving the abbey the Danes set fire to Mede-shamsted Abbey, now known as Peterborough. In theconfusion caused by an accident to some heavily ladenwagons the boy Turgar escaped, and returning to Crow-land found that the monks who had gone to Ancarig hadcome back and were vainly endeavouring to extinguishthe fire which was slowly consuming their monastery.Their first business, on learning of the death of their abbotand prior, was to choose a new superior, a

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