In fact, by excommunication or persuasion, by impetuosity of driving or adroitness in leading, this Abbot, it is now becoming plain everywhere, is a man that generally remains master at last. He tempers his medicine to the malady, now hot, now cool; prudent though fiery, an eminently practical man. Nay sometimes in his adroit practice there are swift turns almost of a surprising nature! Once, for example, it chanced that Geoffrey Riddell Bishop of Ely, a Prelate rather troublesome to our Abbot, made a request of him for timber from his woods towards certain edifices going on at Glemsford. The Abbot, a great builder himself, disliked the request; could not, however, give it a negative. While he lay, therefore, at his Manorhouse of Melford not long after, there comes to him one of the Lord Bishop's men or monks, with a message from his Lordship, "That he now begged permission to cut down the requisite trees in Elmswell Wood,"--so said the monk: Elms_well_, where there are no trees but scrubs and shrubs, instead of Elm_set_, our true _nemus_ and high-towering oak-wood, here on Melford Manor! Elmswell? The Lord Abbot, in surprise, inquires privily of Richard his Forester; Richard answers that my Lord of Ely has already had his _carpentarii_ in Elm_set_, and marked out for his own use all the best trees in the compass of it. Abbot Samson thereupon answers the monk: "Elmswell? Yes surely, be it as my Lord Bishop wishes." The successful monk, on the morrow morning, hastens home to Ely; but, on the morrow morning, 'directly after mass,' Abbot Samson too was busy! The successful monk, arriving at Ely, is rated for a goose and an owl; is ordered back to say that Elmset was the place meant. Alas, on arriving at Elmset, he finds the Bishop's trees, they 'and a hundred more,' all felled and piled, and the stamp of St. Edmund's Monastery burnt into them,--for roofing of the great tower we are building there! Your importunate Bishop must seek wood for Glemsford edifices in some other _nemus_ than this. A practical Abbot!
We said withal there was a terrible flash of anger in him: witness his address to old Herbert the Dean, who in a too thrifty manner has erected a windmill for himself on his glebe-lands at Haberdon. On the morrow, after mass, our Lord Abbott orders the Cellerarius to send off his carpenters to demolish the said structure _brevi manu_, and lay up the wood in safe keeping. Old Dean Herbert, hearing what was toward, comes tottering along hither, to plead humbly for himself and his mill. The Abbot answers: "I am obliged to thee as if thou hadst cut off both my feet! By God's face, _per os Dei_, I will not eat bread till that fabric be torn in pieces. Thou art an old man, and shouldst have known that neither the King nor his Justiciary dare change aught within the Liberties without consent of Abbot and Convent: and thou hast presumed on such a thing? I tell thee, it will _not_ be without damage to my mills; for the Townsfolk will go to thy mill, and grind their corn (_bladum suum_) at their own good pleasure; nor can I hinder them, since they are free men. I will allow no new mills on such principle. Away, away; before thou gettest home again, thou shalt see what thy mill has grown to!"[23]--The very reverend the old Dean totters home again, in all haste; tears the mill in pieces by his own _carpentarii_, to save at least the timber; and Abbot Samson's workmen, coming up, find the ground already clear of it.