interior of England, near the banks of the Thames, and the inhabitants
of the whole region were seized with apprehensions and fears, which
spread rapidly, increased by the influence of sympathy, and excited
more and more every day by a thousand groundless rumors, until the
whole region was thrown into a state of uncontrollable panic and
confusion. The inhabitants abandoned their dwellings, and fled in
dismay into the eastern part of the island, to seek refuge among the
fens and marshes of Lincolnshire, and of the other counties around.
Here, as has been already stated in a previous chapter when describing
the Abbey of Croyland, were a great many monasteries, and convents,
and hermitages, and other religious establishments, filled with monks
and nuns. The wretched fugitives from the expected scene of war
crowded into this region, besieging the doors of the abbeys and
monasteries to beg for shelter, or food, or protection. Some built
huts among the willow woods which grew in the fens; others encamped at
the road-sides, or under the monastery walls, wherever they could
find the semblance of shelter. They presented, of course, a piteous
spectacle--men infirm with sickness or age, or exhausted with anxiety
and fatigue; children harassed and way-worn; and helpless mothers,
with still more helpless babes at their breasts. The monks, instead
of being moved to compassion by the sight of these unhappy sufferers,
were only alarmed on their own account at such an inundation of
misery. They feared that they should be overwhelmed themselves. Those
whose establishments were large and strong, barred their doors against
the suppliants, and the hermits, who lived alone in detached and
separate solitudes, abandoned their osier huts, and fled themselves to
seek some place more safe from such intrusions.

And yet, after all, the whole scene was only a false alarm. Men acting
in a panic are almost always running into the ills which they think