Already they had superseded the wooden Saxon church of Saint Pancras, the boy martyr of ancient Rome, which they found at Lewes, by a stone building, and now upon its site they began to erect a mightier edifice by far, upon proportions which would entail the labour of generations.

A wondrous and beautiful priory arose; it covered forty acres, its church was as big as a cathedral, a magnificent cruciform pile—­one hundred and fifty feet long, sixty-five feet in height from pavement to roof; there were twenty-four massive pillars in the nave {14}, each thirty feet in circumference; but it was not until the time of their grandson, the third earl, that it was dedicated.  Nor indeed were its comely proportions enhanced by the two western towers until the very date of our tale, nearly two centuries later.  Then it lived on in its beauty, a joy to successive generations, until the vandals of Thomas Cromwell, trained to devastation, so completely destroyed it in a few brief weeks that the next generation had almost forgotten its site {15}.

The first monks were foreigners, by the advice of Lanfranc, and, as a great favour, Saint Bernard sent three of his own brethren from Clairvaux, who taught the good people of Lewes to sing “Jesu dulcis memoria.”  Loth though we are to confess it, there can be little doubt that the foreigners were a great advance in learning and piety upon the monks before the Conquest; the first prior, Lanzo, was conspicuous for his many virtues and sweet ascetic disposition.

There the bones of the founders were laid to rest beneath the gorgeous fabric they had founded, and there they had hoped to await the day of doom and righteous retribution.  But alas! poor Normans! in the sixteenth century old Harry pulled the grand church down above their heads; in the nineteenth the navvies, making the railroad, disinterred their bones.  But they respected the dead, the names William and Gundrada were upon the coffins which their profane mattocks unearthed, and the reader may see them at Southover Church.

In the freshness of a May morning Hubert and his new uncle, Sir Nicholas Harengod, dismounted at the gate of the priory, having left their train at the hostelry up in the town.

“Canst thou tell us whether the brother of Saint John, Roger erst of Walderne, is tarrying within?”

“Certes he is, but just now he heareth the Chapter Mass—­few services or offices doth he miss, and like Saint James of old, his knees are worn as hard as the knees of camels.”

“We would fain see him—­here is his son.”

“By our lady, not to mention Saint Pancras, a well-favoured stripling.  And thou?”

“I am Sir Nicholas of Walderne,” said he of that query, with some importance, which was quite lost upon the janitor.

“Walderne!  Some place in the woods may be.  Well, get you, worshipful sirs, to the hospitium, where we feed all hungry folk at the hour of noon, and I will strive to find the good brother.”