Part 10

The defeat of the Scots was shared by the English baron who had brought them into the land. But Eustace Fitz-John was far from standing alone in his breach of fealty to the English king. All the elements of danger and disruption which had been threatening Stephen ever since his accession suddenly burst forth in the spring of 1138.[743] Between the king and the barons there had been from the first a total lack of confidence. It could not be otherwise; for their mutual obligations were founded on the breach of an earlier obligation contracted by both towards Matilda and her son. There could not fail to be on both sides a feeling that as they had all alike broken their faith to the Empress, so they might at any moment break their faith to each other just as lightly. But on one side the insecurity lay still deeper. Not only was the king not sure of his subjects; he was not sure of himself. How far Stephen was morally justified in accepting the crown after he had sworn fealty to another candidate for it is a question whose solution depends upon that of a variety of other questions which we are not bound to discuss here. Politically, however, he could justify himself only in one way: by proving his fitness for the office which he had undertaken. What he proved was his unfitness for it. Stephen, in short, had done the most momentous deed of his life as he did all the lesser ones, without first counting the cost; and it was no sooner done than he found the cost beyond his power to meet. A thoroughly unselfish hero, a thoroughly unscrupulous tyrant, might have met it successfully, each in his own way. But Stephen was neither hero nor tyrant; he was “a mild man, soft and good--and did no justice.”[744] His weakness shewed itself in a policy of makeshift which only betrayed his uneasiness and increased his difficulties. His first expedient to strengthen his position had been the unlucky introduction of the Flemish mercenaries; his next was the creation of new earldoms in behalf of those whom he regarded as his especial friends, whereby he hoped to raise up an aristocracy wholly devoted to himself, but only succeeded in provoking the resentment and contempt of the older nobility; while to indemnify his new earls for their lack of territorial endowment and give them some means of supporting their titular dignity, he was obliged to provide them with revenues charged upon that of the Crown.[745] But his prodigality had already made the Crown revenues insufficient for his own needs;[746] and the next steps were the debasement of the coinage[747] and the arbitrary spoliation of those whom he mistrusted for the benefit of his insatiable favourites.[748] They grew greedier in asking, and he more lavish in giving; castles, lands, anything and everything, were demanded of him without scruple; and if their demands were not granted the petitioners at once prepared for defiance.[749] He flew hither and thither, but nothing came of his restless activity;[750] he did more harm to himself than to his enemies, giving away lands and honours almost at random, patching up a hollow peace,[751] and then, when he found every man’s hand against him and his hand against every man, bitterly complaining, “Why have they made me king, only to leave me thus destitute? By our Lord’s Nativity, I will not be a king thus disgraced!”[752]

[743] “Hi igitur duo anni [_i.e._ 1136 and 1137] Stephani regis prosperrimi fuerunt, tertius vero ... mediocris et intercisus fuit; duo vero ultimi exitiales fuerunt et prærupti.” Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 5 (Arnold, p. 260). By this reckoning it seems that after Stephen’s capture at the battle of Lincoln Henry does not count him king at all.

[744] Eng. Chron. a. 1137.

[745] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 18 (Hardy, p. 712).

[746] “He hadde get his [Henry’s] tresor, ac he todeld it and scatered sotlice.” Eng. Chron. a. 1137.

[747] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 34 (Hardy, p. 732).

[748] See the first and fullest example in the story of the siege of Bedford, December 1138–January 1139; _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 30–32. Cf. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 6 (Arnold, p. 260). The sequel of the story is in _Gesta Steph._, p. 74.

[749] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 18 (Hardy, p. 711).

[750] “Modo hic, modo illic subitus aderat,” _ibid._ “Raptabatur enim nunc huc nunc illuc, et adeo vix aliquid perficiebat.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 105. Cf. R. Glaber’s description of Stephen’s ancestor Odo II. (above, p. 150).

[751] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 18 (Hardy, pp. 711, 712).

[752] _Ib._ c. 17 (p. 711).

Matters were made worse by his relations with Earl Robert of Gloucester. As son of the late king and half-brother of the Empress; as one of the greatest and wealthiest landowners in England--earl of Gloucester by his father’s grant, lord of Bristol and of Glamorgan by his marriage with the heiress of Robert Fitz-Hamon--all-powerful throughout the western shires and on the Welsh march--Robert was the one man who above all others could most influence the policy of the barons, and whom it was most important for Stephen to conciliate at any cost. Robert had followed the king back to Normandy in 1137; throughout their stay there William of Ypres strove, only too successfully, to set them at variance; a formal reconciliation took place, but it was a mere form;[753] and a few months after Stephen’s return to England he was rash enough to order the confiscation of the earl’s English and Welsh estates, and actually to raze some of his castles.[754] The consequence was that soon after Whitsuntide Robert sent to the king a formal renunciation of his allegiance, and to his vassals in England instructions to prepare for war.[755] This message proved the signal for a general rising. Geoffrey Talbot had already seized Hereford castle;[756] in the north Eustace Fitz-John, as we have seen, joined hands with the Scot king; while throughout the south and west the barons shewed at once that they had been merely waiting for Robert’s decision. Bristol under Robert’s own son;[757] Harptree under William Fitz-John;[758] Castle Cary under Ralf Lovel; Dunster under William of Mohun; Shrewsbury under William Fitz-Alan;[759] Dudley under Ralf Paganel;[760] Burne, Ellesmere, Whittington and Overton under William Peverel;[761] on the south coast, Wareham, another castle of Earl Robert’s, held by Ralf of Lincoln, and Dover, held by Walkelyn Maminot[762]:--all these fortresses, and many more, were openly made ready for defence or defiance; and Stephen’s own constable Miles, who as sheriff of Gloucester had only a few weeks before welcomed him into that city with regal honours,[763] now followed the earl’s example and formally renounced his allegiance.[764]

[753] _Ib._ (p. 710).

[754] _Ib._ c. 18 (p. 713).

[755] _Ib._ p. 712; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 104. The grounds of the defiance were--1, the unlawfulness of Stephen’s accession; 2, his breach of his engagements towards Robert; 3, the unlawfulness of Robert’s own oath to him as being invalidated, like Stephen’s claim to the crown, by the previous oath to Matilda. (Will. Malm. as above.)

[756] At Ascension-tide. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 261). There is also an account of the seizure of Hereford by Geoffrey Talbot in _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 69, where it seems to be placed in 1140. The writer has apparently confused the seizure by Geoffrey in 1138 with that by Miles of Gloucester in December 1139, and misdated both.

[757] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 261). Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 917. _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 36.

[758] Ord. Vit. as above. _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 43.

[759] Hen. Hunt. and Ord. Vit. as above.

[760] “Paganellus [tenuit] castellum de _Ludelaue_,” says Hen. Hunt. (as above). But we shortly afterwards find Stephen, according to Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 110), marching against “castellum de _Duddelæge_, quod Radulf Paignel contra illum munierat.” As Henry makes no mention of Dudley at all, and the continuator of Florence makes no mention of Ludlow till 1139, when he says nothing of its commander, it seems plain that there has been some mistake between the two names, which indeed might easily get confounded. Mr. Eyton (_Antiquities of Shropshire_, vol. v. pp. 244, 245) rules that the Continuator is right, as there is no trace of any connexion between Ralf Paganel and Ludlow, which indeed he shews to have been in other hands at this time. See below, p. 301.

[761] Ord. Vit. as above.

[762] Hen. Hunt. and Ord. Vit. as above.

[763] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 105.

[764] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 104.

The full force of the blow came upon Stephen while he was endeavouring to dislodge Geoffrey Talbot from Hereford. After a siege of nearly five weeks’ duration the town caught fire below the bridge; the alarmed rebels offered terms, and Stephen with his usual clemency allowed them to depart free.[765] After taking the neighbouring castle of Weobly, and leaving a garrison there and another at Hereford,[766] he seems to have returned to London[767] and there collected his forces for an attack upon the insurgents in their headquarters at Bristol. Geoffrey Talbot meanwhile made an attempt upon Bath, but was caught and put in ward by the bishop. The latter however was presently captured in his turn by the garrison of Bristol, who threatened to hang him unless their friend was released. The bishop saved his neck by giving up his prize; Stephen in great indignation marched upon Bath, and was, it is said, with difficulty restrained from depriving the bishop of his ring and staff--a statement which tells something of the way in which the king kept his compact towards the Church. He contented himself however with putting a garrison into Bath, and hurried on to the siege of Bristol.[768]

[765] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 106. The writer adds that on the very day of Stephen’s departure (June 15) Geoffrey set fire to everything beyond the Wye; seven or eight Welshmen perished, but no English (_ib._ p. 107)--an indication that the part of Hereford beyond the Wye was then a Welsh quarter.

[766] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 106.

[767] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 36.

[768] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), pp. 108, 109. In _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 37–39, 41, 42, the story is told at greater length, and the writer seems to defend the bishop and to consider his own hero rather ungrateful.

A survey of its environs soon convinced him that he had undertaken a very difficult task. Bristol with its two encircling rivers was a natural stronghold of no common order; and on the one side where nature had left it unprotected, art had supplied the deficiency. The narrow neck of land at the eastern end of the peninsula on which the town stood--the only point whence it could be reached without crossing the water--was in the Conqueror’s last days occupied by a castle which in the Red King’s reign passed into the hands of Robert Fitz-Hamon, famed alike in history and legend as the conqueror of Glamorgan; in those of his son-in-law and successor, Earl Robert of Gloucester,[769] it grew into a mighty fortress, provided with trench and wall, outworks and towers, and all other military contrivances then in use,[770] and surrounded on its exposed eastern side by a moat whose waters joined those of the Avon on the south.[771] Bristol was in fact Robert’s military capital, and under the command of his eldest son it had now become the chief muster-place of all his dispossessed partizans and followers, as well as of a swarm of mercenaries attracted thither from all parts of the country by the advantages of the place and the wealth and renown of its lord.[772] From this stronghold they sallied forth in all directions to do the king all the mischief in their power. They overran his lands and those of his adherents like a pack of hounds; wholesale cattle-lifting was among the least of their misdeeds; every wealthy man whom they could reach was hunted down or decoyed into their den, and there tortured with every refinement of ingenious cruelty till he had given up his uttermost farthing.[773] One Philip Gay, a kinsman of Earl Robert, specially distinguished himself in the contrivance of new methods of torture.[774] In his hands, and those of men like him, Bristol acquired the title of “the stepmother of all England.”[775] If Bristol could be reduced to submission, Stephen’s work would be more than half done. He held a council of war with his barons to deliberate on the best method of beginning the siege. Those who were in earnest about the matter urged the construction of a mole to dam up the narrow strait which formed the haven, whereby not only would the inhabitants be deprived of their chief hope of succour, but the waters, checked in their course and thrown back upon themselves, would swell into a mighty flood and speedily overwhelm the city. Meanwhile, added the supporters of this scheme, Stephen might build a tower on each side of the city to check all ingress and egress by means of the two bridges, while he himself should encamp with his host before the castle and storm or starve it into surrender. Another party, however, whose secret sympathies were with the besieged, argued that whatever material, wood or stone, was used for the construction of the dam would be either swallowed up in the depths of the river or swept away by its current; and they drew such a dismal picture of the hopelessness of the undertaking that Stephen gave it up, and with it all attempt at a siege of Bristol. Turning southward, he struck across the Mendip hills into the heart of Somerset, and besieged William Lovel in Castle Cary,[776] a fortress whose remains, in the shape of three grass-covered mounds, still overlook a little valley where the river Cary takes its rise at the foot of the Polden hills. According to one account, the place yielded to Stephen;[777] according to another,[778] he built over against it a tower in which he left a detachment of soldiers to annoy its garrison, and marched northward to another castle, Harptree, whose site is now buried in the middle of a lonely wood. Harptree was gained by a stratagem somewhat later on;[779] for the present Stephen left it to be harassed by the garrison of Bath, and pursued his northward march to Dudley. Here he made no attempt upon the castle, held against him by Ralf Paganel, but contented himself with burning and harrying the neighbourhood, and then led his host up the Severn to Shrewsbury.[780] The old “town in the scrub,” or bush, as its first English conquerors had called it, had grown under the care of its first Norman earl, Roger of Montgomery, into one of the chief strongholds of the Welsh border. The lands attached to the earldom, forfeited by the treason of Robert of Bellême, had been granted by Henry I. to his second queen, Adeliza; she and her second husband, William of Aubigny, had now thrown themselves into the party of her stepdaughter the Empress; and the castle built by Earl Roger on the neck of a peninsula in the Severn upon which the town of Shrewsbury stands was held in Matilda’s interest by William Fitz-Alan, who had married a niece of Robert of Gloucester.[781] William himself, with his wife and children, slipped out at the king’s approach, leaving the garrison sworn never to surrender. Stephen, however, caused the fosse to be filled with wood, set it on fire, and literally smoked them out.[782] The noblest were hanged; the rest escaped as best they could,[783] while Stephen followed up his success by taking a neighbouring castle which belonged to Fitz-Alan’s uncle Arnulf of Hesdin, and hanging Arnulf himself with ninety-three of his comrades.[784] This unwonted severity acted as a salutary warning which took effect at the opposite end of the kingdom. Queen Matilda, with a squadron of ships manned by sailors from her own county of Boulogne, was blockading Walkelyn Maminot in Dover, when the tidings of her husband’s victories in Shropshire induced Walkelyn to surrender.[785] This was in August.[786] When a truce had been patched up with Ralf Paganel,[787] the west of England might be considered fairly pacified, and Stephen was free to march into Dorsetshire against Earl Robert’s southernmost fortress, Wareham.[788] Nothing, however, seems to have come of this expedition; and Robert himself was still out of reach beyond sea. In the midland shires William Peverel, the lord of the Peak country, was still unsubdued, but he was now almost isolated, for in the north Eustace Fitz-John, as we have seen, had drawn his punishment upon himself from other hands than those of the king. Stephen’s successes in the west, his wife’s success at Dover, were quickly followed by tidings of the victory at Cowton Moor; and meanwhile a peacemaker had come upon the scene.

[769] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 3 (Hardy, p. 692).

[770] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 37.

[771] See plans and description in Seyer, _Mem. of Bristol_, vol. i. pp. 373 _et seq._

[772] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 37.

[773] _Ib._ p. 40, 41. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 109. Both writers, however, seem to lay to the sole account of the Bristol garrison all the horrors which in the Eng. Chron. a. 1137, are attributed to the barons and soldiers in general throughout the civil war.

[774] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

[775] “Ad totius Angliæ novercam, Bristoam.” _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 41.

[776] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 43. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 110.

[777] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 43, 44.

[778] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

[779] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 44.

[780] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above. On Dudley see above, p. 295, note 4{760}.

[781] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 917.

[782] “Omnes infumigat et exfumigat.” Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 110.

[783] _Ibid._

[784] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 917.

[785] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 261).

[786] Ord. Vit. as above.

[787] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

[788] _Ibid._

In the spring of 1138 a schism which had rent the Western Church asunder for seven years was ended by the death of the anti-pope Anacletus, and Pope Innocent II. profited by the occasion to send Alberic bishop of Ostia as legate into England--Archbishop William of Canterbury, who had held a legatine commission together with the primacy, having died in November 1136.[789] Alberic landed just as the revolt broke out, and Stephen had therefore no choice but to accept his credentials and let him pursue his mission, whatever it might be.[790] It proved to be wholly a mission of peace. Alberic made a visitation-tour throughout England,[791] ending with a council at Carlisle, whither the king of Scots, who had adhered to Anacletus, now came to welcome Innocent’s representative. There, on the neutral ground of young Henry’s English fief, the legate made an attempt to mediate between David and Stephen; but all that the former would grant was a truce until Martinmas, and a promise to bring to Carlisle and there set free all the captive Englishwomen who could be collected before that time, as well as to enforce more Christian-like behaviour among his soldiers for the future.[792] On the third Sunday in Advent the legate held a council at Westminster, when Theobald, abbot of Bec, was elected archbishop of Canterbury by the prior of Christ Church and certain delegates of the convent, in presence of the king and the legate.[793] Theobald’s consecration, two days after Epiphany, brought Alberic’s mission to a satisfactory close.[794]

[789] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. pp. 97, 98. On Alberic see Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 96, 97.

[790] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 106.

[791] _Ibid._ The details of his movements in the north are in Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 98, and Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p. 121.

[792] Ric. Hex. (Raine), pp. 99, 100. Joh. Hexh. as above.

[793] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 9 (Arnold, p. 265). Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 101–103. Eng. Chron. a. 1140. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 107–109, and vol. ii. p. 384. Chron. Becc., in Giles, _Lanfranc_, vol. i. p. 207. _Vita Theobaldi_ (_ibid._), pp. 337, 338.

[794] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 109.

In the work of mediation he had soon found that there was one who had the matter more nearly at heart, and who had a much better chance of success than himself. Queen Matilda was warmly attached to her Scottish relatives, and lost no opportunity of urging her husband to reconciliation with them. At last, on April 9, she and her cousin Henry met at Durham; David and Henry gave hostages for their pacific conduct in the future, and the English earldom of Northumberland was granted to Henry.[795] The treaty was ratified by Stephen at Nottingham;[796] the Scottish prince stayed to keep Easter with his cousins, and afterwards accompanied the king in an expedition against Ludlow. The castle of Ludlow, founded probably by Roger de Lacy in the reign of William Rufus, was destined in after-days to become a treasure-house alike for historian, antiquary and artist. Memories of every period in English history from the twelfth century to the seventeenth throng the mighty pile, in which almost every phase of English architecture may be studied amid surroundings of the most exquisite natural beauty. The site of the fortress, on a rocky promontory rising more than a hundred feet above the junction of the Corve and the Teme, was admirably adapted for defence. The northern and western walls of its outer ward rose abruptly from the steep slope of the rock itself; on the east and south it was protected by a ditch, crossed by a bridge which led to the inner ward and the keep, securely placed near the south-western angle of the enclosure.[797] The fief of Ludlow had escheated to the Crown soon after Stephen’s accession,[798] and he had apparently bestowed it upon one Joce or Joceas of Dinan,[799] who now, it seems, was holding it against him. The siege came to nothing, though it was made memorable by an incident which nearly cost the life of Henry of Scotland and furnished occasion for a characteristic display of Stephen’s personal bravery. A grappling-iron thrown from over the wall caught the Scottish prince, dragged him off his horse, and had all but lifted him into the castle, when the king rushed forward and set him free.[800] This adventure, however, seems to have cooled Stephen’s ardour for the assault, and after setting up two towers to hold the garrison in check, he again withdrew to London.[801] Early in the year he had taken Earl Robert’s castle of Leeds;[802] and altogether his prospects were beginning to brighten, when they were suddenly overclouded again by his own rashness and folly.

[795] With the exception of Newcastle and Bamborough, and on condition that the local customs established by Henry I. should be maintained inviolate. Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 105, 106. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 10 (Arnold, p. 265), has a very strange version of the way in which this treaty was brought about; see below, p. 302, note 3{802}.

[796] Ric. Hexh. (as above), p. 106.

[797] See plan and description in Clark, _Mediev. Milit. Archit._, vol. ii. pp. 273–290.

[798] By the death of Payne Fitz-John. See Eyton, _Antiqu. Shropshire_, vol. v. p. 244.

[799] This is Joceas’s surname according to the romantic _History of Fulk Fitzwarine_, and it is adopted by Mr. Eyton, who takes it as derived from Dinan in Britanny; see his account of Joceas, _Antiqu. Shropsh._, vol. v. pp. 244–247. According to this, the name of _Dinham_, now borne by the part of Ludlow which lies south and west of the castle, would be a corruption of _Dinan_, which the above-mentioned romance (a work of the reign of Henry III.) says was the name given to the whole place in Joceas’s time. Mr. Wright, however (_Hist. Ludlow_, pp. 13, 34), thinks that _Dinham_ was the original name, afterwards superseded by Ludlow; in which case Joceas becomes simply “Joceas of Dinham,” with a surname derived not from a foreign birthplace, but from an English fief.

[800] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 10 (Arnold, p. 265).

[801] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 115.

[802] Hen. Hunt. as above. This is Leeds in Kent. It is probably through mistaking it for its Yorkshire namesake that Henry was misled into his odd notion that Stephen himself was fighting in the north, and compelled the Scots to a pacification. See above, p. 300, note 7{800}.

The administrative machinery of the state was still in the hands of Bishop Roger of Salisbury and the disciples whom he had trained. Roger himself retained his office of justiciar; the treasurership was held by his nephew, Nigel bishop of Ely, and the chancellorship by one whom he also called his nephew, but who was known to be really his son. This latter was commonly distinguished as “Roger the Poor”--a nickname pointed sarcastically at the enormous wealth of the elder Roger, compared with which that of the younger might pass for poverty. Outwardly, the justiciar stood as high in Stephen’s favour as he had stood in Henry’s; whatever he asked--and he was not slack in asking--was granted at once: “I shall give him the half of my kingdom some day, if he demands it!” was Stephen’s own confession.[803] But the greediness of the one and the lavishness of the other sprang alike from a secret mistrust which the mischief-makers of the court did their utmost to foster. Stephen’s personal friends assured him that the bishop of Salisbury and his nephews were in treasonable correspondence with the Empress, that they were fortifying and revictualling their castles in her behalf, and that the worldly pomp and show, the vast retinue of armed followers, with which they were wont to appear at court, was really intended for the support of her cause.[804] How far the suspicion was correct it is difficult to decide. Roger owed his whole career to King Henry; he had broken his plighted faith to Henry’s child; it is no wonder if his heart smote him for the ungrateful deed. If, on the other hand, that deed had been done from a real sense of duty to the state, a sincere belief in the advantage of Stephen’s rule for England, then it is no wonder if he felt that he had made a grievous mistake, and sought to repair it by a return to his earlier allegiance. But whatever may be thought of the bishop’s conduct, nothing can justify that of the king. At Midsummer 1139 Stephen summoned Bishop Roger to come and speak with him at Oxford. Some foreboding of evil--possibly some consciousness of double-dealing--made the old man very unwilling to go;[805] but he did go, and with him went his son the chancellor, and his two nephews, the treasurer and Alexander bishop of Lincoln,[806] each accompanied by a train of armed knights. Stephen, equally suspicious, bade his men arm themselves likewise, to be ready in case of need. While he was conversing with the bishops in Oxford castle,[807] a dispute about quarters arose between their followers and those of the count of Meulan and Alan of Richmond;[808] a fray ensued, in which Alan’s nephew was nearly killed,[809] whereupon the two Rogers and the bishop of Lincoln were at once seized by the king. Nigel of Ely, who was lodging apart from the others outside the town,[810] escaped, threw himself into his uncle’s castle of Devizes, and prepared to stand a siege.[811]

[803] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 32 (Hardy, p. 729).

[804] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 46, 47.

[805] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 107. (This writer puts the event a year too early, but afterwards corrects himself, _ib._ p. 116). Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 20 (Hardy, p. 717), says that he himself heard Roger’s expression of reluctance: “Per dominam meam S. Mariam (nescio quo pacto) reluctatur mens mea huic itineri! Hoc scio, quod ejus utilitatis ero in curiâ, cujus est equinus pullus in pugnâ.” This really seems to imply nothing more than that he was conscious of having lost all power to control or guide the king.

[806] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 10 (Arnold, p. 265). Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 107.

[807] “In castro Oxenfordiæ.” Ann. Oseney, a. 1139 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. iv. p. 23).

[808] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 20 (Hardy, p. 717), lays the blame on the men of Alan of Richmond (or Britanny); the _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell, p. 49) on Waleran of Meulan. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 108, gives no name.

[809] Will. Malm. as above. Cf. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 124.

[810] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 919.

[811] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 108. _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 50.

The town of Devizes stands on a steep escarpment of greensand penetrated by two deep ravines which give it the form of a semicircle with a tongue projecting in the middle. On this tongue of rocky ground, five hundred feet above the level of the sea, the bishop of Salisbury had reared a castle unsurpassed in strength and splendour by any fortress in Europe.[812] At its gates Stephen soon appeared, bringing the two Rogers with him as captives. The elder he lodged in a cowshed, the younger he threatened to hang if the place was not surrendered at once. Its unhappy owner, in terror for his son’s life, vowed neither to eat nor drink till the castle was in the hands of Stephen;[813] but neither his uncle’s fasting nor his cousin’s danger moved Nigel to yield. The keep, however, was held by the chancellor’s mother, Matilda of Ramsbury, and the sight of a rope actually round her son’s neck overcame her resistance. She offered her own life in exchange for his, and the offer being refused, she surrendered. Nigel could only follow her example.[814] Roger’s other castles, Sherborne and Malmesbury, soon fell likewise into the king’s hands, and with them the enormous treasure collected by their owner.[815] Alexander of Lincoln was dragged to the gates of Newark and there kept starving till he induced his people to give up the place; and his other castle, Sleaford, was gained by the same means.[816]

[812] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 10 (Arnold, p. 265).

[813] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above. In Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 920, it is the king who vows to starve the bishop till the castle is won. Cf. Hen. Hunt. (as above) and Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 20 (Hardy, p. 718).

[814] Ord. Vit. as above.

[815] Hen. Hunt. and Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._ as above. The Eng. Chron. tells the whole tale briefly under a wrong year (a. 1137).

[816] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 11 (Arnold, p. 266).

Such an outrage as Stephen had committed could not pass unchallenged. His victims indeed were unpopular enough; but two of them were bishops, and the whole English Church was up in arms at once. And the English Church was no longer without a fully qualified spokesman and leader. That leader, however, was not the new-made primate. The legatine commission held by William of Corbeil was not renewed to his successor in the archbishopric: it was sent instead to the man who had long been the most influential member of the English episcopate--Henry, bishop of Winchester. For nearly four months Henry kept this all-powerful weapon lying idly in the scabbard;[817] now, at the call of duty, neither fear nor love hindered him from drawing it against his own brother. Having vainly dinned into Stephen’s ears, both privately and publicly, his entreaties for the restoration of the two bishops, he fell back upon his legatine powers and cited the king to answer for his conduct before a council at Winchester on August 29.[818]

[817] Innocent’s commission bore date March 1, 1139. Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 22 (Hardy, p. 719).

[818] _Ib._ c. 21 (p. 719).

The council sat for three days, and the case was argued out between Stephen’s advocate Aubrey de Vere, the bishop of Salisbury and the legate. Henry formally charged his brother with sacrilege, in having laid violent hands upon bishops, and appropriated their lands and goods to his own use. Stephen met the charge with the plea which had been used by the Conqueror against Odo of Bayeux--he had arrested the culprits not as bishops, but as unfaithful ministers and disloyal subjects; and the property which he had taken from them they had acquired as private men, in defiance of the canons of the Church. Roger retorted that all these accusations were false; both parties threatened an appeal to Rome, and swords were drawn almost in the council-chamber.[819] The legate and the primate intervened as peacemakers, and a compromise was arranged. It was decreed by the council that all prelates who held fortresses other than those which belonged to their sees should place them under the king’s control, and confine themselves henceforth to their canonical duties and rights.[820] On the other hand, Stephen’s act was solemnly condemned, and he had to lay aside his royal robes and come as an humble penitent to receive the censure of the Church.[821] This humiliation saved him from the ecclesiastical penalties of his misdeed; from its political consequences nothing could save him now. He had filled up the measure of his follies. When the obedience of the barons had been forfeited--when the trust of the people had been shaken--two forces still remained by whose help he might have recovered all that he had lost: the administration and the clergy. At a single blow he had destroyed the one and thrown the other into opposition.

[819] _Ib._ cc. 22–28 (pp. 719–724).

[820] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 116. _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 51.

[821] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 51, 52.

His rivals saw that the hour for which they were vainly waiting in Normandy had struck at last in England. All Geoffrey’s attempts on Normandy had failed. At the expiration of his truce with Theobald of Blois in 1136 the barons of Anjou were again in revolt,[822] and it was not till the end of September that Geoffrey was free to invade the duchy. Its internal confusion was such that the twin earls of Meulan and Leicester (sons of King Henry’s friend Robert), who were trying to govern it for Stephen, had been obliged again to call Count Theobald to their aid; but at sight of the hated “Guirribecs,” as the Angevins were derisively called, the Normans forgot their differences and rose as one man against the common foe. On October 1 Geoffrey was wounded in the right foot while besieging the castle of Le Sap near Lisieux; that night his wife joined him with reinforcements; but the morning had scarcely dawned when, like another Geoffrey of Anjou ninety years earlier, he fled with all his host[823]--not, however, before the military fame of the Norman duke, but before the vengeance of the Norman people. Next spring he again ventured to attack the Hiesmois.[824] Stephen, who was now in Normandy and had just won its investiture from King Louis, prepared to meet the invader; but the jealousies between his Norman and his Flemish troops compelled him to abandon the attempt and make another truce for two years.[825] In April next the Angevins broke the truce;[826] in June Robert of Gloucester openly declared for them, and under his influence Bayeux and Caen surrendered to Geoffrey. The count of Anjou retired, however, before a threatened attack from Stephen’s cousin Ralf of Vermandois, in conjunction with Waleran of Meulan and William of Ypres.[827] Early in October he made an unsuccessful attempt upon Falaise.[828] In November he marched upon Toucques, then one of the most flourishing seaport towns of Normandy. The burghers were taken captive “seated in their own arm-chairs,” and in their comfortable houses the Angevins, after feasting to their heart’s content, settled themselves carelessly for the night. But their presence was known to William Trussebut, the governor of the neighbouring castle of Bonneville; and at dead of night a band of desperate characters, purposely chosen for a desperate deed, came by his orders from Bonneville to Toucques, dispersed silently throughout the town, and fired it in forty-five places. The Angevins, wakened by the cries of the watchmen and the roaring of the flames, fled headlong, leaving their arms, horses and baggage behind them. William Trussebut had come forth at the head of his men to intercept their flight, but the smoke and the darkness were such that neither party could distinguish friends from foes. Geoffrey, bewildered as he was, managed to bring some of his men to a stand in a cemetery; there the rest of the Angevin force gradually collected, and waited, in shame and trembling, for the day. At the first gleam of morning they fled, and never stopped till they had buried themselves and their disgrace safe within the walls of Argentan.[829] This time the Normans had taught Geoffrey a lesson which he did not soon forget; he did not venture to meddle with them again for more than two years. Neither he nor his wife made any movement at all till late in the following summer, when a prospect was opened for them beyond the sea by Stephen’s arrest of the two bishops. The council of Winchester broke up on the first of September;[830] on the thirtieth the Empress was in England.

[822] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 268, 269. Cf. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 903.

[823] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 903–908. Rob. Torigni, a. 1136.

[824] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 909, says he was “stipendiarius conjugi suæ factus.”

[825] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 910. Rob. Torigni, a. 1137, makes it three years. Stephen also promised an annual payment of two thousand marks of silver.

[826] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 916.

[827] Ord. Vit. as above.

[828] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 918. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1138 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 34, 145).

[829] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 918, 919.

[830] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 29 (Hardy, p. 724).

CHAPTER VI.

ENGLAND AND THE BARONS.

1139–1147.

On the last day of September 1139 Matilda sailed in company with her brother Robert and a hundred and forty knights;[831] they landed at Arundel, and were received into the castle by its owner, the ex-queen Adeliza.[832] Stephen hurried to besiege them there, but before he could reach the spot one of the travellers had left it. Earl Robert only stayed to place his sister in safety beneath her step-mother’s roof,[833] and then set off to arouse her friends in England with the tidings of her arrival. Stephen flew after him, but in vain. With an escort of only twelve knights he rode right across southern England, met Brian of Wallingford and told him the news, carried it on to Miles at Gloucester, and got safe to his journey’s end at Bristol.[834] The baffled king threw all his energies into the siege of Arundel, till his brother joined him and suggested another scheme. Bishop Henry argued that it was useless to besiege the Empress at one end of England while her brother was stirring up the other, and that it would be far wiser to get all the enemies collected in one spot by letting her follow him to Bristol.[835] That Stephen, having once made up his mind to this course, should not only give his rival a safe-conduct but should commission the count of Meulan and the bishop of Winchester himself to escort her till she reached her brother’s care,[836] was only what might have been expected from his chivalrous character. Of the wisdom of the proceeding it is difficult to judge. We can hardly imagine either of Stephen’s predecessors giving a safe-conduct to a competitor for his crown; but neither Rufus nor Henry had had to deal at once with a lady-rival and with her brother; and both had been, materially, politically and morally, in a much stronger position than Stephen. As matters then stood with him, what in itself looks like a piece of Quixotism may have been the best means of cutting an awkward knot; and both he and Matilda played their game so badly from beginning to end that it is hardly worth while to criticize single moves on either side.

[831] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 29 (Hardy, p. 724). The _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 56, and Rob. Torigni, a. 1139, also name Arundel as the landing-place, but give no date. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 11 (Arnold, p. 266), says merely “statim,”--_i.e._ immediately after the council at Winchester. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. pp. 116, 117, says first “in October,” and afterwards “before S. Peter-in-chains,”--_i.e._ August 1; but he is clearly wrong in this as well as in saying they landed at Portsmouth.

[832] Will. Malm. as above (p. 725).

[833] Rob. Torigni, a. 1139, says he left her there “cum uxore suâ et aliis impedimentis.”

[834] Will. Malm. as above. _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 56. Rob. Torigni, a. 1139.

[835] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 56, 57.

[836] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 29 (Hardy, p. 725). Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 117. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 11 (Arnold, p. 266).

The next seven years were a time such as England never saw before or since. For want of a better name, we call them the years of civil war and count them as part of the reign of Stephen; but the struggle was not worthy of the name of war, and the authority of the Crown, whether vested in Stephen or in Matilda, was a mockery and a shadow. The whole system of government established by King Henry had fallen with his ministers; the death of Bishop Roger in December 1139[837] was typical of the extinction of all law and order throughout the kingdom, nearly half of which had already slipped from Stephen’s grasp. While he kept his Christmas feast in Roger’s episcopal city,[838] Matilda was doing the like in regal state at Gloucester, receiving homage from the western shires, and distributing lands and honours at her will.[839] Of the Easter assembly there is no notice at all,[840] and by Whitsuntide matters had reached such a pass that Stephen held his court not at Westminster as usual but in the Tower, and only one bishop, and that one a foreigner, could be got to attend it.[841] “In those days,” wrote one who lived through them, “there was no king in the land, and every man did not only, as once in Israel of old, that which was right in his own eyes, but that which he knew and felt to be wrong.”[842] For the first and last time in English history, the feudal principle had full play, uncontrolled by any check either from above or from below, from regal supremacy or popular influence. England was at the mercy of the body of feudal nobles whose aim throughout the last seventy years had been to break through the checks placed upon their action by the Conqueror and his sons, and to master the power of the Crown and the control of the state for their own private interests, as the French feudataries had striven in an earlier time to master the Crown of France. This was the condition into which Normandy fell whenever its ducal coronet passed to a weak man or a child, and from which it had had to be forcibly rescued by almost every duke in succession, from Richard the Fearless to Henry the First. By their sternly repressive policy, by their careful adoption and dexterous use of all those safeguards and checks upon the power of the baronage which could be drawn from old English constitutional practice, by their political alliance with the nation against the disruptive tendencies of feudalism, and by their strict administrative routine, the Conqueror and his sons had hitherto managed to save England from such a catastrophe. The break-down of their system under Stephen revealed its radical defect: it rested, in the last resort, on a purely personal foundation--on the strong hand of the king himself. The “nineteen winters” that England “suffered for her sins” under the nominal reign of Stephen were a time of discipline which taught the people, the sovereign, and at last even the barons themselves, to seek a wider and more lasting basis for the organization and administration of the state. The discipline was a very bitter one. The English chronicler’s picture of it has been copied times out of number, yet whoever would paint that terrible scene can but copy it once again. “Every rich man made his castles and held them against the king, and filled the land with castles. They greatly oppressed the wretched men of the land with castle-work; and when the castles were made, they filled them with devils and evil men. They took the men who they weened had any goods, both by night and by day, men and women, and put them in prison for gold and silver, and tortured them with unspeakable torture; never were martyrs so tortured as they were.... When the wretched men had no more to give, they reaved and burned all the townships; and well thou mightest fare all a day’s journey and shouldst never find a man sitting in a township, or land tilled. Corn and cheese and butter were dear, for there was none in the land. Wretched men starved of hunger; some went about asking alms who once were rich men; some fled out of the land. Never was more wretchedness in a land, and never did heathen men worse than these did, for they forbore neither for church nor churchyard, but took all the goods that were therein and then burned church and all.... If two or three men came riding to a township, all fled from them, thinking they were reavers. The bishops and clerks were ever cursing them; but that was nought to them; for they were all accursed, and forsworn, and lost. Even if it was tilled, the earth bare no corn, for it was all undone with their deeds; and they said openly that Christ slept, and His holy ones. Such things, and more than we can say, did we thole nineteen winters for our sins.”[843]

[837] Will. Malm. (as above), c. 32 (Hardy, p. 727). Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 113, under a wrong year.

[838] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 122.

[839] _Ib._ p. 118. Will. Malm. (as above), cc. 29, 31 (pp. 725, 726).

[840] The only allusion to it is in Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 12 (Arnold, p. 267); “Ubi autem ad Natale vel ad Pascha fuerit [sc. rex], dicere non attinet.” As to Christmas, however, see above, p. 310.

[841] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 37 (Hardy, p. 734). The bishop was John of Séez.

[842] Will. Newb., l. i. c. 22 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 69).

[843] Eng. Chron. a. 1137.

The military history of the struggle is scarcely worth following out in detail; for the most part it is but a dreary tale of raid and counter-raid, of useless marches and unfinished sieges, of towns and castles taken and retaken, plundered and burned, without any settled plan of campaign on either side.[844] By the close of the year 1140 the geographical position of the two parties may be roughly marked off by a line drawn from the Peak of Derbyshire to Wareham on the Dorset coast. Owing to the influence of Robert of Gloucester, Matilda was generally acknowledged throughout the western shires; but she was almost imprisoned in them, for the great highway of central England, the valley of the Thames, from Oxford to the sea, was still in Stephen’s hands; London was loyal to him, and so was Kent, although the archbishop as yet stood aloof from both parties, as did also the legate-bishop of Winchester and the bishops and clergy in general. North of Thames, the midland shires served as a wide battle-field where each of the combatants in turn gained and lost ground, without any decisive advantage on either side. In East-Anglia, Hugh Bigod was for the moment again professing obedience to Stephen, but he was simply watching the political tide to take it at the flood and use it for his own interest; and so were the chief men of central and northern England, the earls of Northampton, Derby and York, the lords of the Peak, of Holderness and of Richmond. In the north-west, between the Welsh march and the southern border of Cumberland, lay a district ruled by an almost independent chieftain whose action brought about the first crisis in the war.

[844] The details of the first year’s fighting are in _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 58–69; Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. pp. 118–128; and Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. cc. 30, 31, 34–37 (Hardy, pp. 726, 730–735).

Of all the great nobles, the one whom both parties were most anxious to win to their own interest was the earl of Chester. His earldom was no empty title, no mushroom creation of the last few years, but a great palatine jurisdiction inherited in regular succession from Hugh of Avranches, on whom it had been conferred by the Conqueror, and comprising the sole government and ownership of the whole of Cheshire. Within its limits the earl ruled supreme; every acre of land, save what belonged to the Church, was held under him; every man owed him suit and service; the king himself had no direct authority within the little realm of Chester, and could claim from its sovereign nothing but the homage due from vassal to overlord. The earl, in fact, as has been often said, “held Chester by the sword as freely as the king held England by the crown;” and as things now stood the earl’s tenure was by far the more secure of the two. The present ruler of this miniature kingdom, Ralf by name, had been married almost in his boyhood to a daughter of Robert of Gloucester.[845] All his father-in-law’s persuasions, however, had as yet failed to draw him to Matilda’s side. Stephen on the other hand was equally alive to the importance of securing Ralf’s adherence, and lavished upon him all the honours he could desire,[846] with one exception. That one was the earldom of Carlisle, which his father had held for a few years and then surrendered in exchange for that of his cousin Richard of Chester, who perished in the White Ship.[847] Ralf accordingly quarrelled for the possession of Carlisle with Henry of Scotland, of whose Cumbrian earldom it now formed a part. Henry appealed to Stephen, who could not but take his side,[848] yet for his own sake was anxious to satisfy Ralf. The mother of Ralf and of his elder half-brother William of Roumare was a great Lincolnshire heiress, daughter of Ivo Taillebois by his marriage with a lady of Old-English race whose family held considerable estates in that county, of which one of them had been sheriff under the Conqueror.[849] In consequence, no doubt, of this old connexion, Stephen at the close of the year 1140 contrived a meeting with the two brothers somewhere in Lincolnshire, and there bestowed great honour upon them both,[850] including, as it seems, a grant of the earldom of Lincoln to William of Roumare.[851] A mere empty title, however, satisfied neither of the brother-earls. Rather, as the English chronicler says of them and of all the rest, “the more he gave them the worse they were to him.”[852] His back was no sooner turned than they planned a trick, which their wives helped them to execute, for gaining possession of Lincoln castle.[853] There Ralf set himself up as lord and master of the city and the neighbourhood;[854] and we can want no more speaking witness to the character of such feudal tyranny as was represented in his person than the fact that not only the citizens, but Stephen’s late victim Bishop Alexander himself, sent the king an urgent appeal to come and deliver them from the intruder.[855]

[845] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 38 (Hardy, p. 739).

[846] “Noht forthi thæt he ne iaf him al thæt he cuthe axan him, alse he dide alle othre.” Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

[847] On the earldoms of Carlisle and Chester, see Mr. Hodgson Hinde’s _Introd. to Pipe Rolls of Cumberland_, and his paper on the “Early History of Cumberland,” in _Archæological Journal_, vol. xvi. pp. 229, 230.

[848] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 131, 132.

[849] On the person, pedigree and connexions of Ralf’s mother, Countess Lucy, see Appendix P.P. to Mr. Freeman’s _Norm. Conq._, vol. iii. pp. 778, 779; and Mr. J. G. Nichols’s paper on the “Earldom of Lincoln,” in _Proceedings of Archæological Institute_, Lincoln, 1849, pp. 254–257.

[850] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 38 (Hardy, p. 739).

[851] See Nichols, “Earldom of Lincoln” (_Proc. Archæol. Inst._, Lincoln, 1849), p. 260.

[852] Eng. Chron. a. 1140.

[853] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 921.

[854] “Cumque civibus et affinibus dira injungeret.” _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 70.

[855] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 38 (Hardy, p. 739). _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 70. Ord. Vit. as above. The last alone mentions the bishop.

The news reached Stephen as he was keeping Christmas in London, and the peaceful gathering of the court changed into the muster of an armed host which set off at once for Lincoln, and, actively supported by the citizens and the bishop, sat down to besiege the castle.[856] The present polygonal keep of Lincoln castle appears to have been built by Ralf of Chester in the last years of Stephen’s reign. That which he now occupied stood on the same spot, on the south side of the enclosure, and was the original round shell built by the Conqueror upon a mound of still earlier date. Its base was surrounded by ditches, the outer fortifications on that side being on a lower level, and probably still consisting of nothing more than the old English rampart-mound and palisade; the other three sides of the enclosure, where there was no such steep natural incline, were protected by a curtain-wall raised upon the old mounds, and encircled by ditches wide and deep, but dry, for there was no means of contriving a moat on the top of that limestone crag. The brother-earls were not prepared for Stephen’s prompt and vigorous attack: their force was small, and they had their wives and children to protect. Ralf slipped out alone,[857] made his way to Chester to raise his followers there, and sent a message to his father-in-law offering his allegiance to the Empress if Robert would help the besieged at Lincoln out of their strait.[858] Even had his own daughter not been among them, Earl Robert was not the man to miss such a chance. At the head of the entire force of his party he answered Ralf’s appeal; but so keenly did he feel the importance of the crisis that he kept the real object of his expedition a secret from all but his own nearest friends; and the bulk of his host followed him all the way from Gloucester without any idea whither he was leading them, till they found themselves actually in sight of the foe.[859]

[856] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 13 (Arnold, p. 268). Ord. Vit. as above. According to Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. cc. 38, 39 (Hardy, pp. 739, 740), the castle was closely invested all round, and a chief base of operations seems to have been the minster.

[857] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 38 (Hardy, p. 740). Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 921.

[858] Ord. Vit. as above.

[859] Will. Malm. (as above), c. 39 (p. 741).

The two earls probably met at Claybrook in Leicestershire. At that point Ralf, coming down from Chester by the Watling Street, and Robert, marching up by a branch road from Gloucester, would both strike into the Foss-Way, and thence would follow its north-eastward course along the eastern side of the Trent valley. Between the road, the river and the promontory of Lincoln stretched a tract of low-lying marshy ground across which the Foss-Dyke ran from the Trent at Torksey into the Witham just above the bridge of Lincoln, thus connecting the two rivers and forming an outlet for the superfluous waters of the Trent, which in rainy seasons was only too apt, as it is even now, to overflow its banks and flood all the surrounding country. Against the storms of the winter of 1140 all precautions had failed; the surging stream had risen far above the level of the dyke, and the greater part of the ground between it and the south-western slope of the Lincoln hill was drowned in one vast sheet of water. The Foss-Way entered the city by a bridge over the Witham; the two earls, however, could not venture to take this route, and made instead for an ancient ford which crossed the river a little farther westward, nearer to its junction with the Foss-Dyke. Stephen was evidently expecting them and had anticipated their course, for he had posted a detachment of troops to guard the site of this ford.[860] All trace of the ford itself, however, was lost in the flood. “Even so would I have it,” cried the earl of Gloucester to his son-in-law, as in the dawn of Candlemas-day they reached the southern margin of the water; “once across, retreat will be impossible; we must conquer or die.” The two leaders plunged in, swam boldly across the fordless stream, and their whole host followed their example.[861] Stephen’s outpost fled or was overcome, and the earls apparently wound their way round the foot of the hill till they reached a tract of comparatively high and dry ground on its south-western side. On the eastern border of this tract, close under shelter of the ridge, a dark moving shadow might tell them that swift and secret as their march had been, Stephen was aware of it and had drawn out all his forces to meet them;[862] while on the height above there loomed out dimly, through the chill grey mist of the February morning, the outlines of the fortress which they had come to deliver.

[860] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 71. See note at end of chapter.

[861] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 40 (Hardy, p. 741). Cf. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 15 (Arnold, p. 268).

[862] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 71. See note at end of chapter.

As they drew up in battle array on the marshy meadows there arose a momentary dispute for precedence. The fiery young earl of Chester pleaded that as the quarrel was his, so the foremost place of danger and of honour should be his likewise. But the quarrel was no longer Ralf’s alone. The flower of the army which had come to aid him consisted of the “Disinherited,” the men whom Stephen had deprived of their lands and honours to bestow them on his own favourites--the men whom Henry had raised up and whom Stephen had cast down[863]--and for them Earl Robert claimed the right of striking the first blow to avenge at once their own wrongs and those of King Henry’s heiress. While his eloquence was winding up their feelings to the highest pitch of excitement,[864] all was astir in the royal camp. There, too, crown and kingdom were felt to be at stake, and many of Stephen’s friends besought him not to risk everything in a pitched battle till he should have gathered a larger force--above all, not on that holy day, for it was Sexagesima Sunday as well as the feast of the Purification.[865] Sinister omens at the early mass--the breaking of the lighted taper in the king’s hand, the falling of the pyx upon the altar[866]--lent additional force to their entreaties; but Stephen was impatient for the crisis and would hear of no delay.[867] He drew up his host in three divisions; two on horseback, commanded respectively by Alan of Richmond and William of Ypres;[868] the third on foot around the royal standard, with the king himself in their midst.[869] In the opposing army the van was taken by the “Disinherited”; the men of Chester, who had first occupied it, now stood in the second line, under the command of their own earl, and on foot.[870] The third line was headed by Robert of Gloucester, and on the wings of the host was a crowd of half-savage Welshmen, drawn from the Welsh dependencies of the earldoms of Gloucester and Chester, and “better furnished with daring than with arms.”[871]

[863] “Quos magnus rex Henricus erexit, iste dejecit--ille instruxit, iste destruxit.” Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 15 (Arnold, p. 270).

[864] See Robert’s speech in Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 15 (Arnold, pp. 268–271); and cf. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 922. What does Orderic mean by “Bassiani”?

[865] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 921.

[866] _Ib._ p. 922. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 16 (Arnold, p. 271). There is another version of the story about the taper in _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 70, 71.

[867] Ord. Vit. as above.

[868] “Tres nimirum cohortes sibi Rex constituit.... In primâ fronte regalis exercitûs Flandritæ et Britones erant.” _Ibid._ Compared with the account of the actual battle in Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, pp. 273, 274), the meaning seems to be as given above.

[869] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 16 (Arnold, p. 271).

[870] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 922. Cf. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 13 (Arnold, p. 268), and c. 18 (p. 273).

[871] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 13 (Arnold, p. 268). Cf. Ord. Vit. as above.

In the midst of a spirited harangue addressed to the royal troops by Baldwin of Clare--for among all Stephen’s popular gifts, that of eloquence was lacking[872]--Earl Robert sounded his trumpets for the attack. The Disinherited charged the first line of the royal cavalry under the earls of Richmond, Meulan, Norfolk, Northampton and Surrey, with such vigour that it was scattered almost in a moment. The second line of Stephen’s cavalry--the Flemings under William of Ypres and the count of Aumale--were attacked in flank by the Welsh, whom they put to flight, but a charge of the men of Chester dispersed them in their turn, and the whole body of horsemen on the king’s side turned tail at once.[873] Even William of Ypres for once forsook his royal friend; and the hasty flight of the other leaders, with Alan of Richmond at their head, shewed how half-hearted was their attachment to the king.[874] Stephen and his foot-soldiers were left alone in the midst of the foe, who closed round them on all sides and set to work to assault them as if besieging a fortress. Again and again the horsemen dashed upon that living wall, each time leaving a ghastly breach, but each time driven back from the central point[875] where the king stood like a lion at bay,[876] cutting down every one who came within reach of his sword. The sword broke; but a citizen of Lincoln who stood at his side replaced it by a yet more terrible weapon--one of those two-handed Danish battle-axes which it seems had not yet gone quite out of use in the Danelaw.[877] Almost all his followers were taken or slain, yet still he fought on, with the rage of a wild beast[878] and the courage of a hero, alone against an army. At last Chester charged with all his forces straight at the king. Down upon his helmet came the axe, and Ralf, on his knees in the mire, learned that he was even yet no match for his deserted and outraged sovereign.[879] Most likely it was that blow, dealt at the traitor with all Stephen’s remaining strength, which broke the axe in his hands.[880] Then a stone, hurled no one knew whence, struck him on the head and he fell.[881] A knight, William of Kahaines, seized him by the helmet, shouting “Hither, hither! I have the king!”[882] Yet even then Stephen shook him off, and it was only to Robert of Gloucester in person that he deigned to surrender at last.[883] Baldwin of Clare and three other faithful ones were captured with him; all the rest of the gallant little band were already taken or slain.[884] The triumphant host marched into Lincoln and sacked the town under the royal captive’s eyes.[885] He was then conveyed to Gloucester and there presented, as a great prize, by Earl Robert to his sister, who straightway sent him to prison in Bristol castle.[886]

[872] “Tunc quia rex Stephanus festivâ carebat voce.” Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 16 (Arnold, p. 271).

[873] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, pp. 273, 274).

[874] “His men him suyken and flugæn.” Eng. Chron. a. 1140. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 134, says Alan deserted before the battle began, but Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, p. 273), and Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 922, both name him as receiving the first charge. Orderic (as above) is loud in his denunciations of the traitors. He says that some of them had adopted a practice not unknown in the civil war of the seventeenth century, and still more largely followed in the Jacobite risings of the eighteenth--that of joining the king with a part of their men, and sending the remainder to his enemies.

[875] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, p. 274).

[876] “Stetit autem rex in acie quasi leo.” Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 135.

[877] _Ibid._ Hen. Hunt. (as above) says the axe was the first weapon, and the sword replaced it when broken, but John’s is far the more likely version. See also Ord. Vit. (as above) and Rob. Torigni, a. 1141.

[878] “Rugiens ut leo ... stridens dentibus, spumans ore, apri more.” Rob. Torigni, a. 1141.

[879] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 135.

[880] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, p. 274), says that both sword and axe broke.

[881] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 40 (Hardy, p. 742).

[882] Hen. Hunt. as above.

[883] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._) p. 922. Joh. Hexh. as above. For other accounts see Will. Malm. as above; _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 71; and Will. Newb., l. i. c. 8 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 39, 40). All agree in praise of Stephen’s valour.

[884] Ord. Vit. as above. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 18 (Arnold, pp. 274, 275).

[885] Will. Malm., Hen. Hunt. and Will. Newb. as above.

[886] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 41 (Hardy, p. 742). Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 19 (Arnold, p. 275). Will. Newb., l. i. c. 8 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 40). _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 72. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 129, giving the date, February 9 [1141].

Matilda’s day had come now. Within three weeks after the battle of Lincoln one of her adherents, Miles Beauchamp, regained Bedford castle from its titular earl Hugh the Poor;[887] William Peverel was forced to surrender Nottingham;[888] Hervey of Lions, Stephen’s son-in-law, was driven out of Devizes;[889] and Alan of Richmond, repenting of his treason and vainly striving to atone for it, was caught in a trap which he himself had laid for Ralf of Chester, flung into a dungeon, and compelled to make submission to the earl and the Empress both at once;[890] while voluntary offers of service and homage came flowing in to Gloucester from all quarters.[891] Still the clergy held aloof. The outrage of Midsummer 1139 had made it impossible for them to support the king; but he was still the Lord’s anointed, to whom their faith was pledged; and their leader, Henry of Winchester, was his own brother. Matilda, anxious above all things to gain Henry’s adhesion, bluntly sent him word that if he would join her, she would honour him as the chief among her counsellors; if not, she would lead “all the armies of England” against him at once. The legate, thus driven into a corner--for, at the moment, her words were by no means an empty threat--felt that even for his brother’s interest, let alone the interest of the Church, which was really dearer to him than all beside, his best course was to make terms with the victorious party.[892] The terms were arranged between him and his imperial cousin in person, on a rainy March morning in the plain before Winchester. Next day the old West-Saxon capital opened its gates to the Empress, and the legate himself, with a long train of bishops and abbots, clergy and people, led her in triumphal procession to the “Old Minster” where so many of her forefathers had been crowned and buried.[893]

[887] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 74. Cf. _ib._ p. 32.

[888] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 136.

[889] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 74. Cf. _ib._ p. 69. Hervey, it must be noticed, was actually expelled not by Matilda’s partizans, but by the poor country folk whom his oppressions had exasperated. But it was Matilda who got the benefit of his expulsion.

[890] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 136.

[891] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 74.

[892] _Ib._ p. 75.

[893] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 42 (Hardy, pp. 743, 744). In Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 130, this entry into Winchester on March 3 is confused with Matilda’s formal election there in April. So it is also in _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 75.

In a few days the archbishop of Canterbury followed the legate’s example and swore fealty to the Empress at Wilton.[894] She next advanced to her father’s burial-place, Reading, and thence summoned Robert of Oilly, who had been her father’s constable, to surrender Oxford castle; the summons was obeyed,[895] and she held her Easter court at Oxford.[896] The key of the upper valley of the Thames being thus in her hands, she set herself to win its lower valley by advancing to S. Alban’s and thence opening negotiations with London.[897] A deputation of its citizens were at the same time invited by the legate-bishop to a great council at Winchester on the second Monday after Easter. The first day of the council was spent in a succession of private conferences; on the second Henry spoke out publicly. He set forth how, as vicar of the Apostolic see, he had summoned this assembly to consider of the best means of restoring order in the land; he contrasted its present wretched state with the good peace which it had enjoyed under King Henry; he recited how the crown had been promised to Matilda;--how, in consequence of her absence at her father’s death, it had seemed wiser to secure a king at once in the person of Stephen;--how he, the speaker, had stood surety for the maintenance of the new king’s promises to the Church and the nation:--and how shamefully those promises had been broken. He had tried to bring his brother to reason, but in vain; and now the matter had been decided by a higher Power. The judgment of the God of battles had delivered Stephen into the hand of his rival, and cast him down from his throne; the speaker’s duty was to see that throne filled at once. He had spent the previous day in consultation with the bishops and clergy to whom the right of election chiefly belonged; their choice had fallen upon the candidate to whom their faith had been plighted long ago; he called upon them now publicly to confirm their choice, and swear fealty to King Henry’s heiress as Lady of England and Normandy.

[894] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 42 (Hardy, p. 744). Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 130.

[895] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

[896] Will. Malm. as above. The Contin. Flor. Worc. says she spent Easter at Wilton, and places the visits to Reading and Oxford between Easter and Rogation-tide; but his chronology is very confused, while that of Will. Malm. is especially careful just here. William’s account of all these matters is by far the best. The _Gesta Steph._ cuts them very short.

[897] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 131.

Not a dissentient voice was raised save that of a clerk of the queen’s household, who ventured to read out a letter from his mistress to the legate, passionately entreating for her husband’s restoration. The deputation from London, who seem to have been the only laymen in the assembly, did not exactly oppose the decision of the majority; they merely pleaded for Stephen’s release, and carried back a report of the proceedings to their fellow-citizens, with a view to gaining their assent. It was not till just before midsummer that the Londoners were finally persuaded to forsake their own chosen king;[898] then, indeed, they opened their gates with the utmost humility;[899] and thus the Lady entered her capital and took up her abode at Westminster in triumph.[900]

[898] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. cc. 43–48 (Hardy, pp. 744–749).

[899] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 76, 77.

[900] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 131.

The triumph did not last long. Matilda fell, just as her rival had fallen, by her own fault; only the faults of the two cousins were of a directly opposite nature. The Lady’s habitual temper was that of her grandfather the Conqueror--“very stern to all who withstood her will”; and her will was not, like his, kept under the control of sound policy and reason. Where Stephen had erred through his fatal readiness to listen to the most worthless counsellors, Matilda erred through her obstinate refusal to listen to any counsellors at all. She was no sooner in London than she began confiscating lands and honours and disposing of Church property more ruthlessly than ever Stephen had done; and neither the brother to whom she owed her victory, nor the legate to whom she owed her throne, nor the old king of Scots who came to share his niece’s triumph and give her the benefit of his mature wisdom, could succeed in bringing her to reason. Not a word of conciliation would she hear from any one. The queen appealed to her in behalf of her captive husband; some of the great nobles did the like; but she was deaf to their prayers. The bishop of Winchester besought her at least to secure to Stephen’s children the possessions which he had held before he became king; but she would not hear him either. The citizens of London besought her to give them back “the Laws of King Eadward”;[901] and that, too, she refused. She did worse; she summoned the richest burghers to her presence, demanded from them instant payment of a large sum of money, and when they respectfully remonstrated, drove them away with a torrent of abuse, utterly refusing all abatement or delay.[902] She was soon punished. All through the spring Matilda of Boulogne had been busy in Kent with the help of William of Ypres, rallying her husband’s scattered partizans, and gathering an army which she now led up, wasting, plundering, slaughtering all before them, almost to the gates of London. Her vigorous action determined that of the citizens. One day, as the Empress was quietly sitting down to dinner, the bells began to ring, the people came swarming out of their houses “like bees out of a hive”; the whole city flew to arms; and she and her friends were driven to flee, some one way, some another, as fast as their horses could carry them.[903] Earl Robert accompanied his sister as far as Oxford;[904] thence she hurried on to Gloucester to consult with her favourite Miles, the only person who seems to have had any real influence over her, and brought him back with her to Oxford to help in rallying her scattered forces.[905] Her cousin the queen meanwhile was in London at the head of an enthusiastic city, eager for the restoration of Stephen; from one end of England to the other the heroic wife was leaving no stone unturned in her husband’s interest, and her zeal was speedily rewarded by the re-conversion of the legate. Utterly disgusted at the result of his second attempt at king-making for the good of the Church, after one last warning to the Empress he met his sister-in-law at Guildford, reversed all the excommunications issued against Stephen’s party by the council of Winchester, and pledged himself to do henceforth all that in him lay for the restoration of the captive king.[906] Robert of Gloucester vainly sought to win him back;[907] then the Lady resolved to try her own powers of persuasion, and without a word of notice even to her brother, at the head of a strong body of troops she set off for Winchester.[908]

[901] “Ut leges eis Regis Edwardi observari liceret, quia optimæ erant, non patris sui Henrici, quia graves erant.” Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 132.

[902] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 77.

[903] _Ib._ pp. 78, 79. Cf. Flor. Worc. Contin. as above, and Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 48 (Hardy, p. 749).

[904] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 79.

[905] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.

[906] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. iii. c. 49 (Hardy, p. 750).

[907] _Ib._ c. 50 (p. 751).

[908] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._ as above. _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 80. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 133) says this was just before August 1.