The earl made a resolute resistance, and put the king's force
to flight under a shower of arrows: an act which the courtiers
declared to be treason. At the same time, the abbot of Doncaster
sued up the payment of certain moneys, which the earl,
whose revenue ran a losing race with his hospitality,
had borrowed at sundry times of the said abbot: for the abbots
and the bishops were the chief usurers of those days, and,
as the end sanctifies the means, were not in the least scrupulous
of employing what would have been extortion in the profane,
to accomplish the pious purpose of bringing a blessing on the land
by rescuing it from the frail hold of carnal and temporal
into the firmer grasp of ghostly and spiritual possessors.
But the earl, confident in the number and attachment of
his retainers, stoutly refused either to repay the money,
which he could not, or to yield the forfeiture, which he would not:
a refusal which in those days was an act of outlawry in a gentleman,
as it is now of bankruptcy in a base mechanic; the gentleman
having in our wiser times a more liberal privilege of gentility,
which enables him to keep his land and laugh at his creditor.
Thus the mutual resentments and interests of the king and the abbot
concurred to subject the earl to the penalties of outlawry,
by which the abbot would gain his due upon the lands
of Locksley, and the rest would be confiscate to the king.
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