CHAPTER 38: His chains fall off him
CHAPTER 38
His chains fall off him
THIS same sheriff did not dare treat his prisoner decently, for fear of the king, nor, out of respect for his holiness and for fear of God’s wrath, did he dare ill treat him. So he sent a message to his master.
‘I implore you,’ it went, ‘by my life and salvation, not to force me to imperil my soul by having to punish this holy and innocent bishop any further. I would rather die than scourge him, for he is guiltless.’
This maddened the king. In reply he sent Wilfrid to his town of Dunbar under the supervision of a sheriff called Tydlin whom he knew to be more cruel. Wilfrid, despite his personal holiness and exalted rank, was to be bound hand and foot and not permitted contact with anyone. Tydlin obeyed and ordered the smiths to forge iron fetters. These smiths, with deliberate malice, put their heart into the work, but God worked against them. The irons always turned out either too small and narrow or else so big and loose that they slipped off the wrists and ankles of God’s baptist and evangelist. This terrified the guards so much that they left him unbound. He sang psalms and gave thanks to the Lord unceasingly, ‘Enduring,’ in St Paul’s words to the Hebrews, ‘a great buffeting by afflictions, by reproaches made a gazing-stock, undergoing with joy the robbery of all his goods’1; and in Wilfrid’s case the suffering had been inflicted by his own fellow-countrymen. Thus his jailers, much against their will, were forced to confine him unbound until God’s appointed time.