While she was yet at Oxenford, Matilda had rudely summoned the Bishop of
Winchester, legate to the pope and brother to King Stephen, to appear in
her presence and give an account of his actions and intentions. The
bishop had replied that he was getting ready for her; and this was true
enough, for he was manning and victualling the castles which he had
built within his diocese as at Waltham, Farnham, and divers other
places. Upon quitting our house at Reading, Matilda hoped, by a rapid
march, to surprise the bishop within Winchester, and to make him
captive, and to send him loaded with chains to join the king his brother
in Bristowe Castle, in despite of his legatine and episcopal character
and the authority of the holy see. But the lord bishop was ever wary and
well advised, and before the countess could reach Winchester he withdrew
from that most royal city, having first fortified his episcopal
residence therein, and set up his brother's standard on the roof.
Matilda was treacherously admitted into the royal castle at Winchester,
whither she summoned her half-brother the great Earl of Gloucester, and
her uncle David, king of Scots, who had been for some time in England
vainly endeavouring to make her follow mild and wise counsels. The Scots
king and Gloucester, and the Earls of Hereford and Chester, went
straight to Winchester and abided with the queen and her court in the
castle. But the bishop had made his palace as strong as the castle, and
when the party of Matilda laid siege to it, the bishop's garrison, being
resolved not to yield, did many valorous and some very sinful deeds.
They sallied more than once against the people of Matilda, and put them
to the rout; and they hurled combustibles from the palace, and set fire
to the houses of the town that stood nearest to the palace in order to
drive thence the enemy's archers; but by their thus doing, the abbey of
nuns within the town, and the monastery called the Hide without the town
walls were consumed, to their great sin and shame. Here was a crucifix
made of gold and silver and precious stones, the gift of King Canute,
the Dane; and it was seized by the ravenous flames, and was thrown from
the rood-loft to the ground, and was afterwards stripped of its
ornaments by order of the bishop-legate himself, and more than five
hundred marks of silver and thirty marks of gold were found in it, and
given as largesse to the soldiers; for, whether they stood for Stephen
or for Matilda, or whether they did battle with the sanction of the
church or warred against its authority, these fighting men did mainly
look to pay and plunder. And at a later season the abbey of nuns at
Warewell was also burned by William de Ypres, an abandoned man, who
feared neither God nor men, and who did change sides as often as any
one; but at this season he was for King Stephen, and he set fire to the
religious house for that some of Matilda's people had secured themselves
within it.
Having made a ruin all round the episcopal palace, the bishop's
garrison, being confident of succour, waited the event. The legate did
not make them wait long. Being reinforced by Queen Maud and the stout
citizens of London, who to the number of two thousand took the field for
King Stephen, clad in coats of mail, and wearing steel casques on their
heads, like noble men of war (more money, I wis, had they in their
pouches than most of our noble knights or pseudo proceres), he turned
rapidly back upon Winchester, and besieged the besiegers there. By the
first day of the Kalends of August, or nigh upon the festival of Saint
Afra, saint and martyr, the bishop did gird with a close siege the royal
castle of Winchester. Herein were Matilda, the King of Scots, the Earls
of Gloucester, Hereford, and Chester, and many others of note; and of
all these not one would have escaped if it had not been for the respect
paid by the bishop and the party of King Stephen for the festivals of
the church, which verily ought to be held by all parties as Truces of
God, neither party doing anything while such truce lasts. But when the
siege had endured the space of forty and two days, and when those within
the royal castle had eaten up all their victual, the 14th day of
September arrived, which blessed day was the festival of the Holy
Rood, and a sabbath-day besides; and lo! at a very early hour in the
morning of that day--_Festa duplex_, while my lord bishop's host were
hearing mass, or confessing their sins--which alas! were but too
numerous--Matilda mounted a swift horse, and, attended by a strong and
well-mounted escort, crept secretly and quietly out of the castle. Her
half-brother the Earl of Gloucester followed her at a short distance of
time, with a number of knights, English, Angevins and Brabançons, who
had all engaged to keep between the countess and her pursuers, and to
risk their own liberty for the sake of securing hers. They all got a
good way upon the Devizes road before the beleaguerers knew that they
were gone. But so soon as it was known that they had broken the Truce of
God, the bishop's people were to horse, and began a hot pursuit; and at
Stourbridge the Earl of Gloucester and his band of knights were
overtaken, and, after a fierce battle, were for the most part made
prisoners. But while the long fight lasted, the countess, still pressing
on her swift steed, reached Devizes, the work of, and the cause of so
much woe unto, the magnificent castle-building Roger, late bishop of
Sarum. But the strong castle of Devizes was not furnished with victual,
so that the countess could not tarry there; and being in a great fear as
to what might befal her on the road, she put herself upon a feretrum or
death-bier, as if she were dead, and caused herself to be drawn in a
hearse from Devizes unto Gloucester, whereat she arrived in that guise,
not without the wonderment of men and the anger of the saints. Of all
who had formed her strong rearward guard on her flight from Winchester
castle, the Earl of Hereford alone reached Gloucester castle, and he
arrived in a wretched state, being wounded and almost naked. The other
barons and knights who escaped from the fight of Stourbridge threw away
their arms and essayed to escape in the disguise of peasants; but some
of them, betrayed by their foreign speech, were seized by the English
serfs, who bound them with cords and drove them before them with whips
to deliver them up to their enemies. Yea some of the churls did cruelly
maltreat and maim these proud knights from beyond sea, thereby taking
vengeance for the great wrongs and cruelties which by them had been
committed. Nay men of prelatical dignity were not respected, for they
had had no bowels for the people, who now stripped them naked and
scourged them. The King of Scots, Matilda's uncle, got safe back to his
own kingdom; but her half-brother, the most important prisoner that
could be taken, was conveyed to Stephen's queen Maud, who laid him fast
in Rochester castle, but without loading him with chains as Matilda had
done unto Stephen, for Queen Maud was merciful and generous of heart.
Sir Alain de Bohun, who had joined the legate with a good force before
the siege of Winchester Castle was begun, made haste to enter into that
castle when it was abandoned by Matilda and given up by the few soldiers
that remained in it. It was no thirst for blood and no appetite for
plunder that made our good Caversham lord enter into the fortalice; but
it was his fatherly love for his only boy, and his tenderness for the
little Alice, who had grown up as his daughter. He thought that in so
hurried and rough a departure the children whom he had traced to
Winchester Castle must have been left therein; but although he searched
every part of the castle, as well below ground as above, he could not
find the children, or any trace of them, nor could he from the prisoners
taken learn more than that a fine young boy and a beautiful little girl,
together with sundry foreign damsels, had been sent from Winchester a
day or twain before the legate commenced the siege of the castle. Sir
Alain, albeit sorely disappointed, thanked Heaven that the children had
not been separated. A little later in this year's terrible war, when Sir
Alain de Bohun had discomfited a force commanded by Sir Ingelric of
Huntercombe, his once cherished friend, but now his deadliest foe, and
had well nigh taken Sir Ingelric prisoner, a writing was in secret
delivered unto the good lord of Caversham by one who wore pilgrim's
weeds, but who was a wolf in sheep's clothing, and, in verity, a fautor
and spy of the countess. Sir Alain being competently learned, and well
able to read without the assistance of his mass-priest, who was not
there to aid him, did peruse the secret missive, which did tell him in
the name of Matilda that she had his son in sure-keeping, and would
never deliver him up or permit the eye of father or mother to be blessed
with the sight of him until Sir Alain should have abandoned the traitor
Stephen and have joined the rightful queen of England; and that if he
long failed so to do, the boy would be sent beyond sea and immured in an
Angevin castle, where all traces of him would be for ever lost, and
where, doubtlessly, he would soon perish. "But if," said the letter,
"Sir Alain de Bohun will follow the loyal and wise example of his once
friend Sir Ingelric of Huntercombe and come join the queen, her grace
will receive him with honour, and Sir Ingelric will forget that which is
passed, and the boy shall be restored, and the little maiden likewise,
and they shall be contracted in marriage, and the queen will give a rich
dower to Alice out of her own royal domains, and Sir Ingelric and Sir
Alain may live neighbourly and happily together as aforetime."
Sir Alain, who could write as well as read, replied in few words that
his conscience forbade his breaking oaths to King Stephen; that he could
not change sides either through fear or through interest; that he could
not subject his lance to the distaff, or believe that the warlike
baronage of England would ever live quietly under the rule of a woman;
that he must trust to God and his saints for the protection of his only
child, as also for the well-being of his not less than daughter; and
that if it were the will of Heaven that the children, who had been
brought up so lovingly together, should be conjoined at some future day
in holy matrimony (of which in happier days there had been some talk
between him and the little maiden's father), it would not be in the
power of empress or queen to prevent it. "If," said Sir Alain de Bohun
in terminating his epistle, "if, oh Matilda! thou shouldest so far
forget the tender feelings of a woman and mother as to do harm to mine
only son, and thereby bring my wife with sorrow to the grave, God will
so strengthen mine arm in battle as to enable me to take a fearful
vengeance upon thy party and upon some that are nearest to thee. But
thou wilt not do that which thou sayest. So let me have no more secret,
tampering missives. When Thamesis flows backward from Caversham to
Oxenford instead of pursuing its course to the everlasting sea, then,
but not until then, will Sir Alain de Bohun prove false to his oath and
traitor to King Stephen."
_Circa id tempus_, or nigh upon the time that Sir Alain sent this
response unto Matilda, Sir Ingelric of Huntercombe, having composed his
feud with that family and kindred, espoused the rich widow of that Sir
Jocelyn who had burned his wife, the mother of the little Alice, in his
house, and who had been by him slain in the Falbury of Reading, almost
at our gates. The ladie of Sir Jocelyn had acquired an ill-fame during
her widowhood, for she was greedy of other people's goods and avaricious
of her own, faithless unto her friends, merciless to her foes, and to
her vassals and serfs haughty and cruel. It was as much from the
darkness of her deeds as from her foreign and dark complexion, that she
had gotten all through the country the name of The Dark Ladie. But she
was rich, passing rich, and aspiring, and allied with some of our
greatest men, and Sir Ingelric had given up his whole soul to ambition
and gold. This unseemly matrimony was mainly brought about by the
countess, and there were others of the like sort, which all terminated
in misery and woe, and in visible manifestations of God's wrath and
vengeance.
The Dark Ladie, who had done much mischief in the land in her widowed
condition, became still more terrible as the wife of Sir Ingelric, and
that lost knight became all the worse for his union with her. They
crammed their castle at Speen with a most ungodly garrison, and with
prisoners they kept and tortured for ransom.
King Stephen being a close prisoner in the castle of Bristowe, and the
Earl of Gloucester being well guarded in Rochester Castle, each of the
contending parties was, in a manner, without a head, for Stephen's
brother, the bishop-legate, was, after all, but a priest, and the woman
Matilda was nothing without her half-brother. A negociation was
therefore set on foot for a mutual release of prisoners. This was
several times interrupted, and at each interruption the party of King
Stephen threatened to send the Earl of Gloucester out of the land unto
Boulogne, there to be buried in a castle-prison deep under the ground,
and the party of Matilda threatened to send King Stephen over to Ireland
and consign him to the wild Irishry; but at last, on the first of the
kalends of November, it was agreed between them that the great Earl of
Gloucester should be exchanged for King Stephen; and the earl and the
king being both liberated, each betook himself to the head-quarters of
his friends and partisans. Both factions now stood much as they did
previously to the battle of Lincoln; but fearfully had the people of
England suffered in the interim. And yet, after all these sufferings,
neither faction did turn its thoughts _ad regnum tranquillandum_; but
both did prepare for more battles and sieges, sending forth their bands
of foreigners and leaving the cruel castle-holders to seize, torture,
plunder and kill. While the land was thus weeping tears of blood, the
king and his brother, the bishop, made repair unto London, where the
king had his best friends, and where the legate did summon a great
ecclesiastical council to meet at Westminster on the 7th of the kalends
of December, _ad pacem componendam_, for the composing of peace unto the
church and kingdom. When this council met on the appointed day, which
was in the octaves of Saint Andrew, King Stephen addressed the prelates:
he mildly and briefly complained of the wrongs and hardships he had
suffered from his vassals, unto whom he had never denied justice when
asked for it; he said that if it would please the nobles and bishops of
the realm to aid him with men and money, he trusted so to work as to
relieve them from the fear of a shameful submission to the yoke of a
woman, and so to succeed in his enterprises as to put an end to
intestine war and havoc, and establish his throne in peace. When the
king had done speaking, the legate his brother, who only nine months
before had in the synod held at Winchester declared for Matilda, rose
and proclaimed that the pope had ordered him to release and restore his
brother, that Matilda had observed nothing of what she had sworn to him;
that the great barons of England had performed their engagements towards
her, and that she, not knowing how to use her prosperity with
moderation, had violated all her engagements and oaths; that she had
even made attempts against his, the legate's, liberty and life; and that
this freed him from the obligations of the oaths he had taken to the
Countess of Anjou, for he would not longer call her queen. The legate
further said that the judgment of Heaven was visible in the prompt
punishment of her perfidy, and that God himself now restored his brother
the rightful King Stephen to the throne. Albeit there were some among
them who had but lately quitted the party of Matilda, the prelates and
great men at Westminster assembled did agree that all loyal men ought
forthwith to arm for King Stephen, and that the adherents of the
countess should be everywhere stripped of their usurped authority,
whether in church or civil government; that forced elections should be
all annulled, and that sentence of excommunication should go forth
against all the obstinate and irreclaimable partisans of the countess.
And the Bishop of Winchester, as legatus à latere, did stand up with a
new bull of the pope in his right hand, and pronounced the dread
sentence against all such as should disturb the peace in favour of the
Countess of Anjou, or should build new castles in the land, or invade
the rights and privileges of the church, or wrong the poor and
defenceless.
Judge ye if the news of these high proceedings at Westminster did not
bring with them joy and comfort unto the friends of the late Lord Abbot
Edward and all the honest monks of Reading abbey! Besides the sin and
shame of his forced election, we had suffered many things at the hands
of Anselm during the few months that he had held rule over us. In all
that time he had kept the stout-hearted prior Reginald in the prison
underground, and had maliciously devised penances and punishments for
all such members of the community as had pitied the prisoner. He had
alienated and sold some of the abbey lands to furnish out men-at-arms
for his countess. He had half-starved the brotherhood, and no
hospitality had he exercised unto strangers except to some Angevin
marauders; and when he went away to see the countess, which more than
once he did, he left in the abbey some of these outlandish men to keep
us in submission and dread. But now his evil reign was over, for so soon
as they had learned what had passed at Westminster, and had gotten a
rescript from the legate, the elders of our house took counsel together
and resolved to liberate Reginald the prior, and offer him the mitre,
and to throw Father Anselm into the prison instead of the prior. And the
thing was easy to do, for by this time Anselm had given offence to every
cloister monk, novice, and lay-brother, and the warier sort did all
opine that now that King Stephen was liberated, and his enemies
excommunicated by the legate, the cause of the countess must be
altogether desperate. And so with one voice and one will Anselm was
seized and thrown into the underground cell, and the prior was brought
forth, and conducted in triumph to the abbat's house, and there told
that he must be our lord abbat. Most true it was that he had never
wished for this post of eminence, and now prayed the brotherhood to
elect the chamberlain or the sacrist or any experienced cloister-monk
rather than him; but the universal will and voice of the community would
not be gainsayed, and in the course of a few days the prior was
unanimously elected, by those who had the right of voting in the
Chapter, to be our abbat; and then we all carried him into the church in
procession, sang _Te Deum laudamus_, with loud and jubilant voices, rang
the bells until they well nigh cracked, and set him on the abbat's
throne, and did him all the homage that is due unto the mitred abbat of
a royal abbey; and then brought up Father Anselm, and drove him out of
our gates with many kicks behind, for our new lord abbat would not have
him linger and pine in that cold dark cell underground, saying that he
knew to his cost how sad a thing it was, and that to hold any captive
therein would be to make the wholesome air of the house infaust and
insalubrious.
As he was crossing the Holy Brook the townfolk of Reading, who no more
loved Anselm than did we the monks, caught him by the girdle and threw
him into the stream, so that he was nearly drowned at the place where he
had forced us against our conscience to psalmodize for Matilda. He took
these things so much to heart that he got him back into Normandie. It
was said by some that he falsified his history and his very name, and
so gained admission into the abbey of Bec, but from the volatile nature
of the man, I did rather give my belief to another report--to wit, that
he turned himself into a jongleur or trouvere, and went about France
with women and menestrels and other lewd people.
Sundry times he promised, and did in his heart intend, to visit our
house, and force the restitution of the lands which the usurping Anselm
had alienated to ungodly men; yet King Stephen came not to Reading for
many a year, and when he came he could not tarry with us. But the king
sent Sir Alain de Bohun to build up and restore the ruinous castle of
Reading; and when this had been done, and when, by the vassals and serfs
of the abbey, the walls of the township had been strengthened, we
entered upon the enjoyment of such peace and tranquillity as we had not
known during five long years; for the Philistines could not come
suddenly upon us, or easily break through our defences. At Reading,
indeed, we did live as in a little Goshen, while war was raging all
round about; and albeit we could not always defend our outlying manors
and houses from fire and sword, but suffered many and grievous losses in
serfs, cattle, corn, hay, farm-houses, and granges; we yet suffered less
than other communities, and nothing at all in comparison with the abbat
and monks of Abingdon, our neighbours, but not always friends. Driven
from their once quiet seat at Oxenford, or too sorely troubled in their
residence there by the people of the countess, and the constant coming
and going of warlike and plundering bands, many of the professors and
pupils, _doctores et alumni_, did come unto Reading, and under the
shadow of our secure and peaceful walls, pursue those studies which
were destined to give to England a learned priesthood and a universal
increase of civility. Our brotherhood too did attend to that learning
and to the making of many good books which had done honour to the
Benedictines ever since their first foundation and in whatsoever country
their order was established. Our scribes and copyists once more worked
amain in their quiet cells, multiplying with a slow but correct pen the
precious works of antiquity, and the holy books, and the lives of
saints; and need there was for this labour, since other religious houses
had no peace or leisure, and great and fearful was the destruction of
books and codices in the conflagrations and stormings of this long
intestine war. But for the labours of the Benedictines and some few
learned monks of other orders in England, and but for the blessed
saints, who kept alive their love of letters and books, and gave them
heart and strength to work even in a season of horror and despair, the
land would have been plunged back into utter barbarism, and would have
been void of learning and of books as when the great Alfred came to the
throne. In the tranquil easy days in which I now write, for the solace
of my lonely hours and for the preservation of the fading memory of the
times of trouble, and for no fame or vain glory, the sense of these
things hath already become faint in men's minds, and mayhap, in after
ages, when the world shall have made great strides in learning and all
civility, these labours of the Benedictines will be altogether
forgotten, or be treated as nought. Yet was it they that did mainly save
the land from a great retrograde step; and I, Felix, _servus servorum_,
the humblest or least worthy member of the order (who have so often
seen shining in our western turret the midnight lamp which lighted our
copyists and makers of books at their solitary labours, and who have
seen those labours steadily pursued when the country was ringing with
the din of arms, and was blazing with midnight fires, and when no
earthly honour or reward whatsoever seemed to attend their toil), would
fain put upon record some faint notice of that which was done in the
evil times by our house and order: but not unto us the praise, but unto
thee, oh Lord! They, themselves, sought for no applause--_Celata
virtus_--their virtue is all hidden: not so much as the name is
preserved of these good and laborious monks who did so much for learning
and religion.
It was about the time in which Sir Alain de Bohun did re-edify Reading
Castle, that I, Felix, recovering from my early podagra, under the
instruction and guidance of old father Ambrosius (he hath now been many
years at rest in the chancel of our church, and I in gratitude do say a
daily prayer over his grave), did first addict myself to the use of the
pen, beginning with a missal, which our Pisan limner did richly
illuminate; and when this my first essay was finished, I did present it
unto the Ladie Alfgiva in her house at Caversham, and that bountiful and
right noble ladie did acknowledge the gift by sending unto the abbey
five milch cows and a goodly stock of Caen fowls, which our community at
that time much needed, for there had been a murrain among cattle, and
the spoilers had again swept bare our best farms.
Many were the tears shed by me, and many the masses and prayers said by
our house for the said Ladie Alfgiva and the two missing children. Grief
and anxiety for her son and foster daughter did at times almost bow that
noble dame to the earth, and her grief was the greater because of her
frequent loneliness and the hazards her lord was running in the many
sieges and battles of the times; but although her health declined and
her cheek became wan, hope and trust in heaven's goodness did not
forsake her. A pious dame was Ladie Alfgiva, and of a nature high and
noble in all things. Though thinking day and night of her only son and
her only living child, she never once implored Sir Alain to purchase the
boy's release and his restoration to her arms by proving false to his
oath and untrue to the king, and every time that her lord came to his
home she dried her tears and did all that she could to conceal her great
grief so long as he tarried with her. The virtuous woman is a crown unto
her husband, and verily there be wives as well as virgins that merit the
crown the church awards to saints and martyrs. Saint Catherine on the
wheel, or Saint Agatha at the fiery stake, suffered not pangs so acute
as those of this bereaved mother; and their torture was soon over, and
while they suffered they saw from the wheel and stake the heavens
opening to the eye, and they heard heavenly music in the air which made
them deaf to the shouts of the infidel rabble that were slaying them. So
much bliss and so great a foretaste of celestial joy was not vouchsafed
unto the secular Ladie Alfgiva, and could not be expected by her:
nevertheless had she her happy visions and sweet soothing sounds during
her long bereavement. More than once, in her great loneliness, when her
lord was away fighting for King Stephen, as she stood on the battlements
of her castle at eventide, she saw her boy and his playmate Alice
sitting on the flowery bank which slopes down to the river, as they used
often to sit before Sir Ingelric did steal them away; and she heard
their merry little voices on the breeze, and their frolicsome laugh.
Some would say that she but took two stray lambs for the lost children,
and that the sounds she heard were only made by the evening breeze among
the tall growing grass and the leafy coppices; but I, Felix, could never
so interpret it unto her. But constantly did I strive to give her
comfort, and to conceal from her the cruelties that were daily committed
in the land, and to stop the thoughtless indiscreet tongue of her people
who would have filled her ears with horrible tales of murdered children
and babes, for not the massacre of the Innocents in Judea was so fierce
as the slaughter that raged in England.