The four-year vacancy of the church of St Alban

After Paul's death, the church of the Blessed Alban was without an abbot for four years. During this period King William II, who was a true friend to nobody there and certainly not to the dead abbot, kept the monastery under his own control and pitilessly impoverished it, levelling its woods and extorting money from the followers of the Blessed Alban on trumped up pretexts. However the Blessed Alban did not allow this behaviour to go unavenged.

A miraculous vengeance

For on the very night on which the king subsequently died, there occurred a matter worth relating. Archbishop Anselm, after suffering many losses and wrongs, was in exile and staying at Cluny. In a vision, revealed to him in the night by God, he saw himself led before the judgement seat of the judge of heaven. And when the many saints of England had made a serious complaint about the increasing number of wrongs done to them by a wicked king, the most High in his anger replied, ‘Step forward, protomartyr of the English.’ And, as Alban did so, God gave him a blazing arrow and said, ‘Take vengeance for yourself, and for all the saints of England who have been harmed by the tyrant.’iv Receiving the arrow from the hand of God, Alban threw it down to the earth as if it were a torch and said, ‘Satan, take power over this tyrant, William himself.’ And on the morning of the very same day the kingv William died, pierced by an arrow in the middle of his chest and, as he was dying, he said to the archer, ‘Take it out, you devil.’ And so by this divine vengeance the same tyrant died from an arrow-shot. Also at that time, on the death of Bishop Wulfstan, the bishopric of Worcester suffered great affliction at the hand of the king, as did many other churches. These things happened while Paschal was pope. I shall describe them later.

Richard the fifteenth abbot

Abbot Richard.