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Updated: July 3, 2025
Guthlac of Crowland, after wild fighting for five-and-twenty years, they longed for peace and solitude; and from their longing, carried out with that iron will which marked the mediaeval man for good or for evil, sprang a civilization of which they never dreamed.
Ethelbald fled to Guthlac for refuge, and the hermit predicted he would become king, which in time came to pass. Guthlac died at Crowland, and the grateful king built a stone church there. The buildings increased, their great treasure being of course the tomb of the hermit, which became a source of many miracles.
So Father Guthlac and the rest of the company listened with the greatest reverence to his declaration, as to the words of an inspired oracle. "But let us go to our brethren; they await us," said Dunstan, speaking to the prior.
The prior, Father Guthlac, entered at this moment, and Dunstan talked apart with him for some moments with extreme earnestness, but only the last words which passed between them were audible. "Yes, my brother, you have the words of Scripture," said Dunstan, "to support your proposal: 'When they persecute you in one city, flee ye unto another."
And they were going, by some by-stream, to Crowland, to the sanctuary of the Danish fen-men, that they might cast themselves down before St. Guthlac, and ask of him that mercy for their souls which the conqueror had denied to their bodies.
Leave her in the road, bound as she is, and let us see if St. Guthlac her master will come and untie her." So they rode back. Coming from Deeping two hours after, Azer and his men found the girl on the road, dead. "Another count in the long score," quoth Azer. But when, in two hours more, they came to Spalding town, they found all the folk upon the street, shouting and praising the host of Heaven.
Suffice it to say that he was able to transfer the precious burden from Norman to English hands, and that he arrived home in safety, whither Guthlac had preceded him, with the tidings that all save himself had perished alike.
"I know not; many wise men have thought it possible, and that they may haunt the places where they sinned, ever bearing their condemnation within them, even while they clothe themselves in semblance of the mortal flesh they once wore." The whole party shuddered, and Father Guthlac said, deprecatingly: "My father, let us not talk of this now. We are too weak to bear it, and the place is so awful!"
If we make not the fire, the chill of the fen doth get into our bones. Seest thou how the mist arises? And we be not like the holy hermits of these haunts to withstand chill and vapors." Hugo looked at him in surprise. "How knowest thou of holy hermits?" he asked. "I did even learn of them in Lincoln. It was the canon's servant who did tell me of St. Guthlac and St. Godric.
Guthlac was down, and Aldhelm, two lay brethren also, and we were all but sped when I was ware of a Saxon shout, and the crash of a great mace on a helmet before me, and then, "Well done, my sons!" cried Ealhstan the Bishop, as he came and ringed us round with his own men, and we might breathe again.
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