TUB TEMPLE CBTJBOH. For this sacrilege and impiety Sir Geoffrey was excommunicated, but, deriding the spiritual thunders, he went and laid siege to the royal castle at Burwell. After a successful attack which brought him to the foot of the rampart, he took off his helmet, it being summer-time and the weather hot, that he might breathe more freely, when a foot soldier belonging to the garrison shot an arrow from α loophole in the castle wall, and gave him a slight wound on the head ; " which slight wound," says our worthy monk of Newburgh, " although at first treated with derision, after a few days destroyed him, so that that most ferocious roan, never having been absolved from the bond of the ecclesiastical curse, went to hell."* Peter de Langtoft thus speaks of these evil doings of the earl of Essex, in his curious poetic chronicle. " The abbey of Rampaci» hi nyght he tabbed it The tresore bare awaie with hand thai mrght on hit. Abbot, and prior, and monk, thai did outchace, Of holy kirke a toure to theft thai mad it place. Roberd the Marmimi, the aame wares did he. He robbed tbnrgh trason the bh-k of Coaentre. Here now of their sellarne, what chance befelle. The story sais the same soth as the gospelle : cap. xi. p. 44 to 46. Henry of Huntingdon, who lived in king Stephen's reign, and kept up a correspondence with the abbot of Ramsay, thus speaks of this wonderful phenomenon, of which he declares himself an eye-witness. Dum autem ecclesia ilia pro castello teneretur, ebullirit sanguis a parietibus ecclesie et claustri adjaeentia, indignation em divinam manifestane ; sceleratorum exterminationem denuntians, quod quid em multi viderant, et ego ipse quùtem mets OCU/M inspejri I Script, post Bedam. lib. viii, p. 393, ed. 1601, Francfort. Horeden, who wrote shortly after, has copied this account. Annales, ib. p. 488. * Guilt. Xeubr, ut snpr. p. 4a, 46. Chron, Gervasii, apud X . script, col. 1360. Asmsd. S. Angustili. Tricot ad ans. 1144, p. 14. Virasi. Orompio», col 1033. Utveden, ut supr. p. 488.