"Slanderers and traitors all," shouted Thurstan, "ye all know how these things were brought about! There is not one of ye but had more to do in that of which ye now complain than I had! Ye forced me into those dealings with Jews and Danes."
"Thou wast abbat and ruler of the house, and as such thou art still answerable for all;" said the prior with a very insolent and diabolical sneer.
Thurstan could no longer control his mighty wrath, and springing upon the prior and seizing him by the neck he shouted, "Dog, I will answer upon thy throat! Nay, viper, that stingest thy benefactor, I will crush thee under my heel!"
And before the cellarer and chamberlain or any of that faction could come to the rescue, the puny prior, with a blackened face, was cast on his back upon the floor of the chapter-house, and the Lord Abbat had his foot upon him.
The prior moaned and then screamed and yelled like a whipped cur: the faction rose from their seats and came to his aid, but as they all knew and dreaded the stalwart strength that was in Thurstan's right arm, each of them wished some other monk to go foremost, and so the cellarer pushed forward the chamberlain, and the chamberlain pushed forward the sub-chamberlain, the sacrist, the sub-sacrist, and so with the rest; and maugre all this pushing, not one of them would venture to lay his hand upon the sleeve of the abbat's gown, or to get within reach of Thurstan's strong right arm.
But the Lord Abbat cooling in his wrath, and feeling scorn and contempt instead of anger, took his foot from the hollow breast of the recreant prior, and bade him rise and cease his yelling: and the prior rose, and the abbat returned to his seat.
Now those of the faction who had not felt the tight grip of Thurstan's right hand, nor the weight of his foot, were greatly rejoiced at what had happened, as they thought it would give them a handle whereby to move a vote of the chapter for the forcible suspension of the Lord Abbat; and to this end they raised a loud clamour that Thurstan had acted uncanonically, tyrannically, and indecently, in beating a monk who was next in dignity to himself, and that by this one act he had merited suspension.
"Babblers and fools," cried Thurstan, growing wroth again; "Fools that ye are, though with more malice than folly, and with more treachery than ignorance, it is not unto me that ye can expound the canons of the church, or the rules of the order of Saint Benedict! Was I not bred up in this house from mine infancy? Was I not reputed sufficiently learned both in English and in Latin, many years before I became your abbat? Have I not read and gotten by heart the laws and institutes? Ye have a rule if ye would read it! and is it not this--that it is your duty to obey your Lord Abbat in all things, and that your abbat may impose upon each and all of ye such penance as he thinks fit, _secundum delictum_, even to the chastising of ye with his own hand? Chamberlain! I have seen Abbat Wilfric cudgel thee with his fen-pole until thy back was as black as thy heart now is. Sacrist! thou art old now, but thou wilt remember how Abbat Wilfric's predecessor knocked thee down in the refectory on the eve of Saint John, for being drunk before evening-song, and thine offence was small compared to that which this false prior hath given me before the whole house!"