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Updated: May 28, 2025
He now came back to England with the King, and William's first act was to imprison both Waltheof and Roger. The imprisonment of Roger, a rebel taken in arms, was a matter of course. As for Waltheof, whatever he had promised at the bride-ale, he had done no disloyal act; he had had no share in the rebellion, and he had told the King all that he knew.
Now what amount of favour did Waltheof give to these schemes? Weighing the accounts, it would seem that, in the excitement of the bride-ale, he consented to the treason, but that he thought better of it the next morning. He went to Lanfranc, at once regent and ghostly father, and confessed to him whatever he had to confess.
And at Exning, between the fen and Newmarket Heath, "Was that bride-ale Which was man's bale." For there was matured the plot which Ivo and others had long seen brewing. William had made himself hateful to all men by his cruelties and tyrannies; and indeed his government was growing more unrighteous day by day. Let them drive him out of England, and part the land between them.
And the long, square room, with the cave bed behind its shutter in the hollow of the wall, the light-coloured, square beams, and the foaming basin of bride-ale that a fat-armed girl in a blue kerseymere gown served out to scullion after scullion; the open windows from which a little knave was casting bride-pennies to some screaming beggars and women in the street; the blind hornman whose unseeing eyes glanced along the reed of his bassoon that he played before the open door; the two saucy maids striving to wrest the bride's stockings one from the other all these things appeared friendly and jovial in his eyes.
So that, when one of the maids, wresting the stocking, fell hard against him, he clasped her in his arms and kissed her till she struggled from him to drink a mug of bride-ale. 'Hodie mihi: mihi atque cras! he said. For it was in his mind a goodly thing to pay a usuress with base coins.
It don't matter to me, much. . . . But we've to wipe up the mess: an' if the young men must go an' wipe it up, an' if for them there's never to be bride-ale nor children, 'tis your doin' an' the doin' o' your generation all over Europe.
There was that bride-ale That was many men's bale, said the Saxon chronicler, and it was so indeed.
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