Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

ST. i.DMUND KICK. 237
tion. It was only in cases of sore necessity that all
three methods were levied at once.1 Furthermore,
Henry III. was wont to prolong vacancies in sees
and abbeys, because it served his purpose to dispose
of their revenues. This was no new custom on the
king's part, but it was not
"
what was to be expected
from a man who heard three Masses a day. Piety
which stops at external acts is of little avail.
Archbishop Laiigton died in 1228, and was succeeded
by Richard of Canterbury, whose short pontificate
came to a close in 1231. A long vacancy
followed, and then an unanimous election in favour
of a canon of Salisbury, Edmund Eich, better known
to us as St. Edmund of Canterbury. He was the
son of a tradesman at Abingdon, and of a holy
mother, named Mabilia, who taught him from his
earliest years the science of the saints. Some
mothers can make their sons what they like, whether
from the fulness of their own desires, or the working
of grace in their children. How well Mabilia succeeded
may be gathered from the fact that the whole
of Edmund's life belonged to God. He seems never
to have even faltered on his path. His father,
Reynold, with Mabilia's consent, retired from the
world, and made his religious profession at Evesharn
Abbey. Mabilia practised the austerities of the
saints, and very early initiated her sons into her
secrets. Edmund studied first at Oxford, and afterwards
in Paris. His mother's parting gift to her
1 Stubbs, Constitutional History, i. 582.