Page 92 of 155

     [* W. Malms, p. 179.]

     [** W. Malms, p, 180]

     [*** Trivet, p, 19 Gul Neub. p. 372. W. Heming. p.
     487. Brompton, p. 1035.]

But Stephen was not of a disposition to submit long to these usurpations, without making some effort for the recovery of royal authority. Finding that the legal prerogatives of the crown were resisted and abridged, he was also tempted to make his power the sole measure of his conduct, and to violate all those concessions which he himself had made on his accession,[*] as well as the ancient privileges of his subjects. The mercenary soldiers, who chiefly supported his authority, having exhausted the royal treasure, subsisted by depredations; and every place was filled with the best grounded complaints against the government. The earl of Glocester, having now settled with his friends the plan of an insurrection, retired beyond sea, sent the king a defiance, solemnly renounced his allegiance, and upbraided him with the breach of those conditions which had been annexed to the oath of fealty sworn by that nobleman.[**]

     [* W. Malms, p. 180. M. Paris, p. 5 ]

     [** W. Malms, p. 180.]

1137.

David, king of Scotland, appeared at the head of an army in defence of his niece’s title, and penetrating into Yorkshire, committed the most barbarous devastations on that country.

1138.

The fury of his massacres and ravages enraged the northern nobility, who might otherwise have been inclined to join him; and William, earl of Albemarle, Robert de Ferrers, William Piercy, Robert de Brus, Roger Moubray, Ilbert Lacy, Walter l’Espee, powerful barons in those parts, assembled an army, with which they encamped at North Allerton, and awaited the arrival of the enemy. A great battle was here fought, called the battle of the Standard, from a high crucifix, erected by the English on a wagon, and carried along with the army as a military ensign. The king of Scots was defeated; and he himself, as well as his son Henry, narrowly escaped falling into the hands of the English. This success overawed the malecontents in England, and might have given some stability to Stephen’s throne, had he not been so elated with prosperity as to engage in a controversy with the clergy, who were at that time an overmatch for any monarch.

Though the great power of the church, in ancient times, weakened the authority of the crown, and interrupted the course of the laws, it may be doubted whether, in ages of such violence and outrage, it was not rather advantageous that some limits were set to the power of the sword, both in the hands of the prince and nobles, and that men were taught to pay regard to some principles and privileges.

1139.

The chief misfortune was, that the prelates, on some occasions, acted entirely as barons, employed military power against their sovereign or their neighbors, and thereby often increased those disorders which it was their duty to repress. The bishop of Salisbury, in imitation of the nobility, had built two strong castles, one at Sherborne, another at the Devizes, and had laid the foundations of a third at Malmsbury: his nephew; Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, had erected a fortress at Newark; and Stephen, who was now sensible from experience of the mischiefs attending these multiplied; citadels, resolved to begin with destroying those of the clergy, who by their function seemed less entitled than the barons to such military securities.[*] Making pretence of a fray, which had arisen in court between the retinue of the bishop of Salisbury and that of the earl of Brittany, he seized both that prelate and the bishop of Lincoln, threw them into prison, and obliged them by menaces to deliver up those places of strength which they had lately erected.[**]

Henry, bishop of Winchester, the king’s brother, being armed with a legantine commission, now conceived himself to be an ecclesiastical sovereign no less powerful than the civil; and forgetting the ties of blood which connected him with the king, he resolved to vindicate the clerical privileges which, he pretended, were here openly violated. He assembled a synod at Westminster, and there complained of the impiety of Stephen’s measures, who had employed violence against the dignitaries of the church, and had not awaited the sentence of a spiritual court, by which alone, he affirmed, they could lawfully be tried and condemned, if their conduct had anywise merited censure or punishment.[***] The synod, ventured to send a summons to the king, charging him to appear before them, and to justify his measures;[****] and Stephen, instead of resenting this indignity, sent Aubrey de Vere to plead his cause before that assembly. De Vere accused; the two prelates of treason and sedition; but the synod refused, to try the cause, or examine their conduct, till those castles of which they had been dispossessed, were previously restored to them.[*****] The bishop of Salisbury declared, that he would appeal to the pope; and had not Stephen and his partisans employed menaces, and even shown a disposition of executing violence by the hands of the soldiery, affairs had instantly come to extremity between the crown and the mitre.[******]

     [* Gul. Neub. p. 362.]

     [** Chron. Sax. p. 238. W. Malms, p. 181]

     [*** W. Malms p. 182.]

     [**** W. Malms, p. 182. M. Paris, p. 53,]

     [****** W. Malms p 183.]

While this quarrel, joined to so many other grievances, increased the discontents among the people, the empress, invited by the opportunity, and secretly encouraged by the legate himself, landed in England, with Robert, earl of Glocester, and a retinue of a hundred and forty knights. She fixed her residence at Arundel Castle, whose gates were opened to her by Adelais, the queen dowager, now married to William de Albini, earl of Sussex; and she excited, by messengers, her partisans to take arms in every county of England. Adelais, who had expected that her daughter-in-law would have invaded the kingdom with a much greater force, became apprehensive of danger; and Matilda, to ease her of her fears, removed first to Bristol, which belonged to her brother Robert, thence to Glocester, where she remained under the protection of Milo, a gallant nobleman in those parts, who had embraced her cause. Soon after, Geoffrey Talbot, William Mohun, Ralph Lovell, William Fitz-John, William Fitz-Alan, Paganell, and many other barons, declared for her; and her party, which was generally favored in the kingdom, seemed every day to gain ground upon that of her antagonist.

Were we to relate all the military events transmitted to us by contemporary and authentic historians, it would be easy to swell our accounts of this reign into a large volume; but those incidents, so little memorable in themselves, and so confused both in time and place, could afford neither instruction nor entertainment to the reader. It suffices to say, that the war was spread into every quarter; and that those turbulent barons, who had already shaken off, in a great measure, the restraint of government, having now obtained the pretence of a public cause, carried on their devastations with redoubled fury, exercised implacable vengeance on each other, and set no bounds to their oppressions over the people. The castles of the nobility were become receptacles of licensed robbers, who, sallying forth day and night, committed spoil on the open country, on the villages, and even on the cities; put the captives to torture, in order to make them reveal their treasures; sold their persons to slavery; and set fire to their houses, after they had pillaged them of every thing valuable. The fierceness of their disposition, leading them to commit wanton destruction, frustrated their rapacity of its purpose; and the property and persons even of the ecclesiastics, generally so much revered, were at last, from necessity, exposed to the same outrage which had laid waste the rest of the kingdom. The land was left untilled; the instruments of husbandry were destroyed or abandoned; and a grievous famine, the natural result of those disorders, affected equally both parties, and reduced the spoilers, as well as the defenceless people, to the most extreme want and indigence.[*]