A.D. 1074. ESCAPE OP TUBGOT. 155 pagans had with fire and sword reduced the churches and monasteries to ashes, Christianity being almost extinguished, there were scarcely any churches left, and those few covered with twigs and thatch ; but no monasteries had been anywhere rebuilt for two hundred years. Thus did belief in religion wax faint, and all religious observances entirely die away ; the name of a monk was a thing unheard-of by the people in the provinces, who were struck with amazement when by chance they beheld any one devoted to the monastic life, and elothed in the garb of a monk. But on the above-named three persons coming to dwell among them, they themselves also began to change their brutish mode of living for the better, to give them all possible assistance in restoring the sacred plaees, rebuilding the half-ruined ehurehes, and even building new ones in the spots where they had previously existed. Many persons also abandoned a secular life, and assumed the monastic habit ; few, however, of these were provincials ; they were mostly persons from the remote districts of England, who, being allured by the report of their character, repaired thither, and zealously attached themselves to them. Of these, Turgot, afterwards bishop of the Scots, was one. He, being sprung from a family by no means among the lowest ranks of the English, was one among a number of hostages, who, when England was totally subjected to the Normans, had been placed in confinement in Lincoln castle, whieh was the place of safe keeping for the whole of Lindesey. Having bribed the keepers with a sum of money, he secretly, to the hazard of his friends, fled to certain Norwegians, who were then at Grimsby, loading a merchant-ship for Norway, on board whieh the ambassadors of king "William, who were about to proceed to Norway, had procured a passage. When the ship, speeding on at fuB sail, had lost sight of land, behold ! the run-away hostage of the king came forth from the lower part of the ship, where the Norwegians had concealed him, in the sight of aU, and eaused astonishment among the ambassadors and their attendants. For he had been sought in every spot, and the king's tax-gatherers had made their search in that very ship ; but the cunning of those who concealed him had contrived to deeeive the eyes of the searchers. Upon this, the ambassadors insisted upon their furling their sails, and by aB means steering back the ship towards the