cells, filled Hie abbey with his soldiers, and made a fort of the church ; he took away all the gold and silver vessels of the altar, the copes and vestments of the priests and singers ornamented with precious stones, and all the decorations of the church, and sold them for money to reward his soldiers.* The monkish historians of the period speak with horror of these sacrilegious excesses. " He dared," says William, the monk of Newburgh, who lived in the reign of king Stephen, " to make that celebrated and holy place a robber's cave, and to turn the sanctuary of the Lord into an abode of the devil. He infested all the neighbouring pro vinces with frequent incursions, and at length, emboldened by constant success, he alarmed and harassed king Stephen himself by his daring attacks. He thus, indeed, raged madly, and it seemed as if the Lord slept and cared no longer for human affairs, or rather his own, that is to say, ecclesiastical affairs, so that the pious labourers in Christ's vineyard exclaimed, ' Arise, Ο God, maintain thine own cause ... . how long shall the adversary do this dishonour, how long shall the enemy blaspheme thy name V But God, willing to make his power known, as the apostle saith, endured with much ' long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction,' and at last smote his enemies in their hinder parts. It was discovered indeed, a short time before the destruction of this impious man, as we have learned from the true relation of many witnesses, that the walls of the church sweated pure blood,—a terrible manifestation, as it afterwards appeared, of the enormity of the crime, and of the speedy judge ment of God upon the sinners."f * Vaea autcra altaris aurea et argentea Deo sacrato, ca^as ettam cajitorum lap.dibua preciosÌB ao opere mirifico contextas, casulas cum albis et cesteria eceleeiastici decorja ornomentis rapnit, Ac. XS. ut sup. G est. reg. Steph. p. 693, 964. f De vita sedorutâ ct condigno interitu Ganfridi de Magnavilla.—Chtill, Neultr. Kb. 1.