Though Hereward spared the church and went away, yet very soon afterwards the monks, possibly sympathising more with Hereward than with their Norman Abbot (who had left them for a time), allowed themselves to indulge in a drunken revel; and while carousing, a fire seized upon the church and other remaining buildings, from which Gunton says they rescued only a few relics, and little else.  But, as Mr Poole has well observed[7], “we must receive such accounts with some allowance; and, in fact, neither was the abbey so despoiled, nor the church so destroyed, but that there was wealth enough to tempt robbers in the next abbacy, and fuel enough for another conflagration.”  The robbers in question were foreigners who got into the church by a ladder over the altar of SS.  Philip and James, one of them standing with a drawn sword over the sleeping sacrist.  The plunder they carried off was valuable, but it was recovered when the thieves were overtaken.  The King, though he may have punished the robbers, retained the goods so that they were never restored to the abbey.

That Ernulf (1107-1114) should not have done anything towards improving the church is a fact that speaks as plainly as possible of its being already in good condition.  Had there been anything like the desolation that some accounts pretend, Ernulf would have spared no exertions in his endeavours to put things right.  He came from Canterbury, where he was Prior, and where he had already distinguished himself as a zealous builder; but all that is recorded as due to him at Burgh is the completion of some unfinished buildings, the dormitory, the refectory, and the chapter-house.  We may feel confident therefore that the Saxon Church built by Ethelwold remained substantially as first erected until the time of Ernulf’s successor; and that the remains to be seen to this day were in their present position when Edgar and Dunstan visited the place.

These newly erected buildings were all that escaped a terrible conflagration that occurred in the time of John of Sais (1114-1125).  Hugo Candidus, the chronicler, was an eye-witness of this fire, and has left us an account of it.  On the second day of the nones of August, being the vigil of Saint Oswald, King and Martyr (4th Aug. 1116), through neglect, the whole monastery was burnt down, except the chapter-house, dormitory, refectory, and a few outside offices.  The refectory had only been in use for three days, having been apparently opened (as we should say in these days) by an entertainment given to the poor.  The whole town shared the fate of the monastery.  The Abbot was a very passionate man, and being in a great rage, when he was disturbed at a meal by some of the brethren who had come into the refectory to clear the tables, cursed the house, incautiously commended it to the enemy of mankind, and went off immediately to attend to some law-business at Castor.  Then one of the servants, who had tried unsuccessfully to light a fire, lost his temper, and (following the