, and perhaps the
strongest that can be quoted, we may mention, that the Princess Matilda, though
a daughter of the King of Scotland, and afterwards both Queen of England, niece
to Edgar Atheling, and mother to the Empress of Germany, the daughter, the wife,
and the mother of monarchs, was obliged, during her early residence for
education in England, to assume the veil of a nun, as the only means of escaping
the licentious pursuit of the Norman nobles. This excuse she stated before a
great council of the clergy of England, as the sole reason for her having taken
the religious habit. The assembled clergy admitted the validity of the plea, and
the notoriety of the circumstances upon which it was founded; giving thus an
indubitable and most remarkable testimony to the existence of that disgraceful
license by which that age was stained. It was a matter of public knowledge, they
said, that after the conquest of King William, his Norman followers, elated by
so great a victory, acknowledged no law but their own wicked pleasure, and not
only despoiled the conquered Saxons of their lands and their goods, but invaded
the honour of their wives and of their daughters with the most unbridled
license; and hence it was then common for matrons and maidens of noble families
to assume the veil, and take shelter in convents, not as called thither by the
vocation of God, but solely to preserve their honour from the unbridled
wickedness of man.
    Such and so licentious were the times, as announced by the public
declaration of the assembled clergy, recorded by Eadmer; and we need add nothing
more to vindicate the probability of the scenes which we have detailed, and are
about to detail, upon the more apocryphal authority of the Wardour MS.
 

                             Chapter Twenty-Fourth

 I'll woo her as the lion wooes his bride
                                                                        Douglas.
 
While the scenes we have described were passing in other parts of the castle,
the Jewess Rebecca awaited her fate in a distant and sequestered turret. Hither
she had been led by two of her disguised ravishers, and on being thrust into the
little cell, she found herself in the presence of an old sibyl, who kept
murmuring to herself a Saxon rhyme, as if to beat time to the revolving dance
which her spindle was performing upon the floor. The hag raised her head as
Rebecca entered, and scowled at the fair Jewess with the malignant envy which
old age and ugliness, when united with evil conditions, are apt to look upon
youth and beauty.
    »Thou must up and away, old house-cricket,« said one of the men