“Now pardon, Holy Father, I crave. 
O Holy Father, pardon and grace! 
  Dame Alice, my wife, The bane of my life,
I have left, I fear me, in evil case! 
A scroll of shame in my rage I tore,
Which that caitiff Page to a paramour bore;
’Twere bootless to tell how I storm’d and swore;
Alack! and alack! too surely I knew
The turn of each P, and the tail of each Q,
And away to Ingoldsby Hall I flew! 
  Dame Alice I found,—­She sank on the ground,—­
I twisted her neck till I twisted it round! 
With jibe and jeer and mock and scoff,
I twisted it on—­till I twisted it off!—­
All the King’s Doctors and all the King’s Men
Can’t put fair Alice’s head on agen!”

  “Well-a-day! well-a-day!  Sir Ingoldsby Bray,
Why really—­I hardly know what to say:—­
Foul sin, I trow, a fair Ladye to slay,
Because she’s perhaps been a little too gay.—­
—­Monk must chaunt and Nun must pray;
For each mass they sing, and each pray’r they say,
  For a year and a day, Sir Ingoldsby Bray
A fair rose-noble must duly pay! 
So may his qualms of conscience cease,
And the soul of Dame Alice may rest in peace!”

“Now pardon, Holy Father, I crave,
  O Holy Father, pardon and grace! 
    No power could save That paramour knave;
  I left him, I wot, in evil case! 
    There midst the slain Upon Ascalon plain,
Unburied, I trow, doth his body remain
His legs lie here and his arms lie there,
And his head lies—­I can’t tell your Holiness where!”

“Now out and alas!  Sir Ingoldsby Bray,
Foul sin it were, thou doughty Knight,
    To hack and to hew A champion true
  Of holy Church in such pitiful plight! 
  Foul sin her warriors so to slay,
  When they’re scarcer and scarcer every day!—­
    A chauntry fair, And of Monks a pair,
To pray for his soul for ever and aye,
Thou must duly endow, Sir Ingoldsby Bray,
And fourteen marks by the year thou must pay
  For plenty of lights To burn there o’ nights—­
None of your rascally ’dips’—­but sound,
Round, ten-penny moulds of four to the pound;—­
And a shirt of the roughest and coarsest hair
For a year and a day, Sir Ingoldsby, wear!—­
So may your qualms of conscience cease,
And the soul of the Soldier shall rest in peace!”

“Now, nay, Holy Father; now nay, now nay! 
Less penance may serve!” quoth Sir Ingoldsby Bray. 
“No champion free of the Cross was he;
No belted Baron of high degree;
  No Knight nor Squire Did there expire;
He was, I trow, a bare-footed Friar! 
And the Abbot of Abingdon long may wait,
With his monks around him, and early and late,
May look from loop-hole, and turret, and gate,
He hath lost his Prior—­his Prior his pate!”