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ROGER OF WENDOVER Flowers of history. The history of England from the descent of the saxons to A.D. 1235. vol.2

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ROGER OF WENDOVER
Flowers of history. The history of England from the descent of the saxons to A.D. 1235. vol.2
page 114



Α.Ο. 1191.] THE CHANCELLOR LV WOMAN'S CLOTHES. 113 with all his household, and crossed the river Thames to llermondsey, leaving his brothers Henry and Osbert as security for the restoration of the castles ; for he had sworn too that he would not leave the kingdom till the fortresses had been given up. He thence went to Canterbury, and took the cross of the holy pilgrimage, laying aside that of the legateship, which he had borne for a year and a half after the death of pope Clement, to the detriment as well of the Roman as the English church. After doing this he went to Dover, attended by Gilbert bishop of Rochester, and Henry de Cornhill, sheriff of Kent, and thinking he could blind the eyes of the sailors there, he invented a new kind of fraud ; he converted the man into the woman, inasmuch as he exchanged the priest's robe for the harlot's gown. lie clothed himself in a woman's green gown, with a cape of the same colour, and with a hood over his head, he went down to the beach carrying some linen cloth as if for sale. As the priest thus disguised was sitting on a rock near the shore waiting for a fair wind, a sailor who wished for some sport with the woman, was astonished to find breeches on a female, and immediately shouted aloud, "Come here, all of you, come here!" said he, "and look at a man in woman's dress !" A number of idle women assembled, and eagerly inquired the price of the eloth which he carried for sale : he made them no answer, as not understanding the English language, on which they consulted amongst themselves ; and suspecting him to be an impostor, they laid hands on the veil which covered Ids mouth, and pulling it down from his nose backward, they discovered the features of a man, dark, and lately shaved. Immediately they shouted to each other, saying, " Come, let us stone this monster who is a disgrace to both sexes." A crowd of men and women got together there, and, tearing the hood from his head, they threw him down and dragged him ignominiously by his sleeves and cape over the sand and stones, injuring the prelate much. At length his followers came up to release him, but without success, for the people followed him up with insatiable eagerness, reviled him, assailed him with blows, spat on him, and after dragging him through the streets, shut him up as a prisoner in a cellar. And thus he became an object of deri-ion to the populace, and would that he had only disgraced himself and VOL. π. ι


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