 in a
furious war with the clergy.
    It seems that, after all his deadly menaces against the Abbot of Saint
Edmund's, Athelstane's spirit of revenge, what between the natural indolent
kindness of his own disposition, what through the prayers of his mother Edith,
attached, like most ladies (of the period), to the clerical order, had
terminated in his keeping the Abbot and his monks in the dungeons of
Coningsburgh for three days on a meagre diet. For this atrocity the Abbot
menaced him with excommunication, and made out a dreadful list of complaints in
the bowels and stomach, suffered by himself and his monks, in consequence of the
tyrannical and unjust imprisonment they had sustained. With this controversy,
and with the means he had adopted to counteract this clerical prosecution,
Cedric found the mind of his friend Athelstane so fully occupied, that it had no
room for another idea. And when Rowena's name was mentioned, the noble
Athelstane prayed leave to quaff a full goblet to her health, and that she might
soon be the bride of his kinsman Wilfred. It was a desperate case therefore.
There was obviously no more to be made of Athelstane; or, as Wamba expressed it,
in a phrase which has descended from Saxon times to ours, he was a cock that
would not fight.
    There remained betwixt Cedric and the determination which the lovers desired
to come to, only two obstacles, - his own obstinacy, and his dislike of the
Norman dynasty. The former feeling gradually gave way before the endearments of
his ward, and the pride which he could not help nourishing in the fame of his
son. Besides, he was not insensible to the honour of allying his own line to
that of Alfred, when the superior claims of the descendant of Edward the
Confessor were abandoned for ever. Cedric's aversion to the Norman race of kings
was also much undermined, - first, by consideration of the impossibility of
ridding England of the new dynasty, a feeling which goes far to create loyalty
in the subject to the king de facto; and secondly, by the personal attention of
King Richard, who delighted in the blunt humour of Cedric, and, to use the
language of the Wardour Manuscript, so dealt with the noble Saxon, that, ere he
had been a guest at court for seven days, he had given his consent to the
marriage of his ward Rowena and his son Wilfred of Ivanhoe.
    The nuptials of our hero, thus formally approved by his father, were
celebrated in the most august of temples, the noble Minster of York. The King
