It remains for us now to follow the fate of the murderers [of Thomas Becket]. On the night of the deed the four knights rode to Saltwood, leaving Robert de Broc in possession of the palace, whence, as we have seen, he brought or sent the threatening message to the monks on the morning of the 30th. They vaunted their deeds to each other, and it was then that Tracy claimed the glory of having wounded John of Salisbury.
The next day they road forty miles by the sea coast to South Malling, an archepiscopal manor near Lewes. On entering the house, they threw off their arms and trappings on the large dining-table which stood in the hall, and after supper gathered round the blazing hearth; suddenly the table started back, and threw its burden on the ground. The attendants, roused by the crash, rushed in with lights and replaced the arms.
But soon a second still louder crash was heard, and the various articles were thrown still farther off. Soldiers and servants with torches searched in vain under the solid table to find the cause of its convulsions, till one of the conscious-stricken knights suggested that it was indignantly refusing to bear the sacrilegious burden of their arms.
So ran the popular story; and , as late as the fourteenth century, it was still shown in the same place – the earliest and most memorable instance of a “rapping,” “leaping,” and “turning table.”
Historical Memorials of Canterbury, by Penrhyn Stanley (1855). Page 102.
Grandison, iv. i. “Monstratur ibidem ipsa tabula in memoriam miraculi conservata.” See also, Giraldus, in Wharton’s Anglia Sacra, 425.