X.

Before the swallows made their next return to our meads and river sides,

the flames of war were again kindled in our near neighbourhood. When

that I heard Sir Ingelric had stolen back into the island with an

Angevin band, and that Brian Fitzcount, through the treachery of some of

King Stephen's people, had been allowed to win his way into his

inexpugnable castle at Wallingford with great supply of munitions of

war, I did foresee that the year eleven hundred and fifty-three would be

a year of storm and trouble to Reading Abbey, and to all the country

besides. Sir Ingelric's return was soon notified to us by the burning of

divers villages between Reading and Speen, and by the sudden plunder and

devastation of some of our own outlying manors; and while we were

grieving at these things, news was brought to us that Brian Fitzcount

had called upon all the castle holders in the west to take up arms, not

for the Countess Matilda, but for her son Henry; and that the said Sir

Brian had ravaged well nigh all the country from Wallingford to

Oxenford, making a great prey of men and cattle.

Sir Alain de Bohun and our stout-hearted Abbat Reginald collected such

force as they could, and marched in quest of Sir Ingelric; but that

cruel knight fled at their approach, and then retreated into the far

west. King Stephen made an appeal to the wealthy and warlike citizens of

London, who were ever truer to him than were his great barons, and being

well furnished with arms and men, and the great machines proper for the

sieges of strong places, the king went straight to Wallingford with a

determination not to remove thence until he had reduced that terrible

castle. This time he came not unto our abbey, but the lord abbat sent

some of our retainers to assist in the great siege; and as all the lords

that were true to the king marched with the best of their vassals to

Wallingford, a great army was collected there. Of the people of that

vicinage, every free man that was at all able to work repaired to the

king's camp, and offered his labour for the capture and destruction of

Brian Fitzcount's den. A deep trench was speedily cut all round the

castle, and such bulwarks and palisadoes were made that none could come

out of the place or enter therein; and catapults were in readiness to

batter the walls, and mines were digging that would have caused the keep

to totter and fall. Certes, the emprise was close to a successful issue,

when tidings were brought that Henry Plantagenet had landed in the

south-west with one hundred and forty knights, and three thousand

foreign foot soldiers, that all the great barons of the west were

proclaiming him to be the lawful king of England, and were joining his

standard, and that he was moving with a mighty force to lay siege to

Malmesbury. King Stephen had found no more faith abroad than he had

found at home. Ludovicus, the French king, having many weighty reasons

to mislike and fear Henry Plantagenet, had made a treaty of alliance

with Stephen, had affianced his daughter Constance to Prince Eustace

the son of Stephen, and had engaged to keep the powerful Angevin at home

by threatening Anjou and Normandie with the invasion of a great French

army; but, instead of a great army, the French king sent but a few

ill-governed bands; and when these had been discomfited in a few

encounters, Ludovicus listened to proposals of peace, and abandoned the

interests of Stephen. And that great English earl, Ranulph, earl of

Chester, whom King Stephen had driven out of Lincoln, went over to Anjou

to invite Henry into England, and to engage soul and body in his

service; first taking care to obtain from that young prince a deed of

charter conveying to him, the said Earl Ranulph, in _foede et

heriditate_, the lands of William de Peveril, and many fiefs and broad

manors in Cheshire, Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire, and elsewhere,

together with sundry strong castles which the said earl hoped to

keep--but did not. Forced was King Stephen to raise his siege of

Wallingford Castle, and to evacuate and destroy the wooden castle of

Cranmerse which he had raised close to Brian Fitzcount's gates. He had

scarcely drawn off his people, and begun a march along the left bank of

Thamesis above Wallingford, ere Henry Plantagenet, having gotten

possession of Malmesbury and of many strong castles, which the

castle-builders, not foreseeing that which was to happen, had given up

to him, appeared on the right bank of the river with his great army of

horse and foot. The Plantagenet was of an heroical temper; and Stephen,

who had fought in so many battles, was yet as brave as his young rival,

and was transported with wrath at seeing how many barons who had

repeatedly sworn allegiance to him were in array against him; moreover,

Prince Eustace was with his father, and, like a valorous and passionate

youth, was eager for the fight; and of a certainty there would have been

a terrible and bloody battle, if battle could have been joined at the

first confronting of these two forces; but a heavy and long-continuing

rain had swollen all the rivers and brooks, and had poured such a volume

of water into Thamesis that there was no crossing it. Therefore lay the

two mighty armies opposite to each other for the space of several days;

and during that interval certain of our prelates bestirred themselves as

peace-makers, and sundry great lords on either side said that verily it

was time this unnatural war should have an end. But Henry Plantagenet

did want for his immediate wearing the kingly crown of England, and

Stephen had vowed by the glory of God to keep that crown on his head

until his death, and none durst speak to him of a present surrender of

it. When the waters somewhat abated the king marshalled his host, as if

determined to come at his foe by crossing the river at a ford not far

off; but upon mounting his war-horse, which had carried him in many

battles, the steed stumbled and fell, not without peril to his rider.

The king mounted again, laughing as at a trifling accident; but when the

horse fell a second time under him, his countenance became troubled.

Nevertheless he essayed a third time, and for a third time the steed

fell flat to the earth as though he had been pierced through poitrail

and heart by an arrow. Then did the king turn pale, and his nobles 'gan

whisper that this was a fearful omen.

"By our Ladie St. Mary," quoth Prince Eustace, "the steed hath grown

old, and distemper hath seized him during his days of inactivity in

this swampy and overflooded country! This is all the omen, and the death

of the poor horse will be all our loss."

And the resolute young prince would have mounted his father on another

steed, and have marched on to the ford, and then straight to battle. But

the Earl of Arundel, being much inclined to peace, and a bold and

eloquent man, took advantage of the consternation which the omen or

horse-sickness had created in the king's army, and going up to Stephen,

he did advise him to make a present convention and truce with Henry

Plantagenet, affirming that the title of Duke Henry to the crown of

England was held to be just by a large part of the nation, and by some

who had never been willing to admit his mother to the throne; that the

country was all too weary of these wars, and that the king ought by

experience to know the little trust that was to be put in many of his

present followers. "But I will not die a discrowned king," said Stephen.

"Nor shalt thou," replied the great Earl of Arundel.

After many entreaties and prayers, the kingly mind of Stephen yielded so

far as to allow a parley for a truce; and Henry Plantagenet, not being

less politic than warlike, entered upon a convention, and then agreed to

confer with Stephen.

The place for conference was so appointed that the river Thamesis, where

it narrows a little above Wallingford, parted the two princes and the

great lords that were with them; so that from either bank King Stephen

and Duke Henry saluted each other, and afterwards conversed together.

The conference ended in a truce, during which neither party was to

attempt any enterprise of war, but both were to discuss and amicably

settle the question of Duke Henry's right to the crown upon the demise

of Stephen.

Prince Eustace had not been a prince if he had quietly submitted to an

arrangement which went to deprive him of the succession to a great

kingdom: he burst suddenly away from the king's camp, calling upon those

who had taken the oaths to him to follow him to the east. Not many rode

off with him; but our young Lord Arthur, feeling the obligations of his

replicated vows and the ties of duty and friendship, would not quit his

master; nor did his father Sir Alain, who had placed him in the prince's

service, make any effort to restrain him. As for the good lord of

Caversham himself, he returned to his home with the double determination

of observing the truce, and of not giving up his allegiance to King

Stephen, unless the king should voluntarily release him therefrom; for,

much as he sighed for the return of peace, Sir Alain prized his honour,

and did never think that a good settlement of the kingdom could be

obtained through falsehood and perjury. But woful apprehensions and

sadness did again fall upon the house at Caversham, for the course taken

by Prince Eustace was full of danger to him and his few adherents, and

it was reported that his great anger and desperation had driven him mad.

But short was the career of that hapless young prince, who, though born

to a kingdom, lived not to see anything but the calamities thereof. I

wis those men who had most flattered him, and had taken oaths to him as

to the lawful heir to this glorious crown of England, did speak most

evil of him in the days of his adversity, and after his death. I, who

knew him and conversed with him oft times, did ever find him a youth of

a right noble nature, valorous and merciful like his father, and as

devout and friendly unto the church as his mother Queen Maud. Yet may I

not deny that in his last despair he did some wicked deeds which sorely

grieved our young Lord Arthur, who could not prevent them, and who yet

would not abandon him in this extremity of his fortune. Coming into the

countries of the east, and finding few to join him, he burst into the

liberties of St. Edmund, and into the very abbey of St. Edmund, king and

martyr, and demanded from the Lord Abbat Ording, and the monks of that

holy house, money and other means for the carrying on of his heady

designs; and when that brotherhood, as in duty bound, and like men that

were unwilling to be wagers of new wars, did refuse his request and

point out the unreasonableness and ungodliness of them, he ordered his

hungry and desperate soldiers to seize all the corn that was in the

abbey, and carry it into a castle which he held hard by, and then to go

forth and plunder and waste the lord abbat's manors. The corn was

carried to the castle, but before further mischief could be done the

soul of Prince Eustace was required of him; for that very day, as he sat

at dinner in his castle, he dropped down in a deadly fit, and was dead

before the kind Arthur could get a monk to shrive him. The Countess

Matilda, I ween, had done worse deeds at Reading than Eustace did at St.

Edmund's Bury, and, certes, the patrons and protectors of our house, our

Ladie the Virgin, and St. James, and St. John the evangelist, were not

less powerful to punish than St. Edmund the king and martyr;

nevertheless Matilda was let live, and the young Eustace perished in his

prime. But these things are not to be scanned by mortal eye, and the

judgments of heaven are not always immediate, and it might not have been

so much in vengeance for Eustace's great sin in robbing the monks of St.

Edmund's Bury of their corn, as in mercy to the suffering people of

England, that the son of King Stephen was so suddenly smitten and

removed. The monks of St. Edmund did, however, give out that it was

their saint who slew him for his sin, causing the first morsel of the

stolen victual he put into his mouth to drive him into a frenzy, whereof

he died. Others there were who accounted for his opportune death by

alleging that some subtile poison had been administered to him; but of

this was there never any proof. Our young Lord Arthur, without denying

the great provocation he had given unto St. Edmund, did always think

that his brain had been touched ever since his father held the

conference above Wallingford with Duke Henry, and that a great gust of

passion killed him. But whatever was the cause of his death, and however

sad was that event in itself, he was surely dead, and it was just as

sure that the kingdom would be the better for it. If few had followed

him while he was alive, still fewer stayed to do honour to his remains;

but Arthur, with a very sincere grief, and with all respect and piety,

carried the body of his master to the sea-side, and thence by water into

Kent, and saw it interred at Feversham by the side of Queen Maud, with

all the rites and obsequies of holy church. Fidelity could not go beyond

this; the great arbiter, Death, had freed him from his allegiance and

vows to the prince, and so from the honoured grave in Feversham Abbey,

Arthur de Bohun rode with all possible speed unto Caversham. So true was

it, that nothing that man could do could keep Alice and him long

asunder.

Many of our wicked castle builders, who had not always respected the

truce of God, would not now be bound by the truce concluded between two

mortal princes; and when the term of that suspension had expired, some

of the barons on either side would have renewed the war on a grand

scale, and have carried it into all parts of the kingdom. Some few

sieges were commenced, and some hostile movements made in the field, by

King Stephen and Duke Henry; but since the unhappy death of Prince

Eustace, the king cared not much about keeping the crown in his family,

for he had but one other lawful son, and this son, the gentle-tempered

William, was only a boy, and was without ambition; for his eyes had not

been dazzled by any near prospect of the crown, and none of the baronage

had ever sworn fealty to him. And thus, when the peace-makers renewed

their blessed endeavours, King Stephen was easily induced to agree that

Duke Henry should be his successor in this kingdom, provided that he

left him a peaceable possession of the disputed throne for the term of

his natural life, and bound himself to fulfil a few other engagements.

The king's brother, the Bishop of Winchester, did now join with his old

enemy, Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, in urging this accord, and on

either side the great barons recommended the adjustment; for all were

weary of the war except a few desperate robbers, whose crimes had been

so numerous that they could not hope to escape punishment at the return

of peace. Another great council of barons and prelates was, therefore,

called together at Winchester; and in that royal and episcopal city, on

the seventh of the Kalends of November, in this the last year of our

woe, eleven hundred and fifty-three, the agreement was finished, and a

charter naming Henry heir to the throne was granted by Stephen, and

witnessed by Theobald the archbishop, the Bishop of Winchester, eleven

other bishops, the prior of Bermondsey, the head of the knights

Templars, and eighteen great lay lords. And a short season after this,

the king and the duke travelled lovingly together to Oxenford, where the

earls and barons, by the king's commandment, did swear fealty to the

duke, saving the king's honour, so long as he lived; and the Plantagenet

did pledge himself to behave to Stephen of Blois as a duteous and

affectionate son, and to grant to him, all the days of his life, the

name and seat of the kingly pre-eminence. In the presence of the best of

our baronage, the king and duke did then confer about other state

matters, and did fully agree and concur in this--that there must be an

end of castle-building and castle-builders, that the donjons which

remained must all down, and that the vengeance of the law must fall upon

the robbers, whether they had been, or had pretended to be, followers of

Matilda, or Stephen, or Duke Henry himself; for, being now acknowledged

heir to the crown, Henry wished not to come into a wasted and

impoverished land, and well he knew, at all times, that the prosperity

of the people maketh the wealth, and power, and glory of the ruler.

Those castles in the west, which had been given up to him by their

builders, were presently levelled with the earth; and even Brian

Fitzcount was warned that he must quit his strong house at Wallingford,

or abide the most fearful consequences. Some of the cruel oppressors of

their country came in of their own will, and submitted to King Stephen

and the law; but others held out stiffly, denying all allegiance whether

to the king regnant or to Duke Henry as his successor; and in this sort

the poor people in divers parts continued to be harrowed, and plundered,

and captured, and tortured, as in the foregone time. Nay, some of our

wicked barons, making league with the rapinous princes and wild chiefs

of the Welsh mountains, did continue to keep the open fields in the

western parts, and to desolate the land from the river Severn even unto

the river Mersey.

Many were the private discourses which King Stephen held with the

hopeful Plantagenet, for Stephen's heart was all for the commonalty of

England, and he trusted that he could give such instruction and advice

to Henry as would aid that prince in making his future government firm,

and, at home, pacific, and in that sort a blessing to the people. But

the Plantagenet had solemnly pledged his faith by treaty and by oath to

leave unto Stephen, so long as he should live, the full exercise of the

authority royal, and this could hardly have been if Henry had tarried in

England; and, moreover, matters of high concernment called for the

return of the duke to Anjou and Normandie. So, in the spring season of

the year of grace eleven hundred and fifty-four, after some long

consultations held at Dunstable to treat of the future state and peace

of the kingdom, the king accompanied the duke to the sea-coast, and,

with a loving leave-taking of Stephen, Henry embarked and sailed over

to Normandie. Foul rumours there were, as that Stephen's young son with

a party of Flemings would have waylaid the duke on Barham downs, and

have there slaughtered him; but I wis all this was but a fable, for the

boy William was too young for such matters, and being of a gentle and

unambitious nature, and too well knowing that the crown of England had

been a crown of thorns to his father, he was more than content with the

lands and honours secured unto him by the Charta Conventionum.

Also was it nigh upon the time that William, archbishop of York, a

kinsman of King Stephen, who had been deprived by the pope in the year

eleven hundred and forty-seven, and who had been reinstated after the

truce concluded at Wallingford, suddenly departed this life at York, and

was buried with great haste and little ceremony in that minster. And

here too there were evil reports spread through the land as that

Archbishop William had been poisoned. Having no light wherewith to

penetrate the darkness of this mystery, I will not affirm that King

Stephen's kinsman was so disposed of; but verily the malice of men's

hearts was great, and there was much secret poisoning in these times!

Stephen being thus left to govern by himself, sundry of our great men,

having from that which they had seen and heard of Prince Henry come to

the conclusion that if he should be king he would keep a bit in their

mouths and keep a strong rein in his own hands, did repair to the king

who had so often been betrayed by them, and did strongly urge him to

break the treaty and trust to war and the valour and faith of his

vassals for the continuance of his family on the throne. But Stephen

having a respect for his oaths (which mayhap was the greater by reason

of a sickness that was upon him), and knowing the trust that was to be

put in the faith and steadiness of these men, said, "There hath been war

enough, and too much woe!" and he would not give his ear unto them, but

did command forces to be gathered for putting down the castle-builders

and the robbers that had allied themselves with the Welsh.

And of a surety in these his last days King Stephen betook himself

wholly to repair the ruins of the state, and heal the great afflictions

of the church. He made a progress into most parts of the kingdom to

reform the monstrous irregularities which had arisen by long war, to

curb the too great baronial power, to get back to our abbeys and

churches the things whereof they had been despoiled, and to speak and

deal comfortably with all manner of peace-loving men. Some castles he

reduced by force, others he terrified into submission, and others were

taken by a few good lords like Sir Alain de Bohun. In all these

occurrents nothing was heard of our impenitent neighbour Sir Ingelric,

save that his wife the dark ladie of the castle had died, and that he

himself was thought to have gone into the west. Of that greater and far

more terrible chief, Brian Fitzcount, we did hear enough and more than

enough, for in despite of the joint commandment of King Stephen and Duke

Henry, he kept possession of his castle at Wallingford and continued his

evil courses in all things. Yea, at a season when we did apprehend no

such doing, one of his excommunicated companies, stealing by night down

the vale of Thamesis, did set fire to our granaries at Pangbourne, and

maim our cattle, and so sweep our basse-court that we had not left so

much as one goose wherewith to celebrate the feast of St. Michael. The

better to put down these atrocious doings, King Stephen called together

within the city of London a great and godly meeting of barons and

prelates and head men of towns; and sooth to say the spirit of peace and

love presided over that great council, and many proper methods were

taken by it and good laws passed. I, who went unto London city with our

lord abbat, did see with mine own eyes the respect which was now paid

unto the eldermen of great towns and boroughs, and likewise to the

franklins, whether mixed by the marriages of their fathers or

grandfathers with Norman women, or whether of the old and unmixed Saxon

stock, the number of these last being as a score to one; and then did I

say to myself that if these things continued, the day might arrive when

the burghers and free plebeians of England might be something in the

state. Nay, I did even dream that in process of time the collar might be

taken from the neck of our serf, and the cultivator of the soil be no

longer a villein, but a free man. But I concealed this my bright vision,

lest it should expose me to censure and mockery.

When this great council at London was broken up King Stephen made repair

unto Dover to meet and confer with his ancient ally and friend the Earl

of Flanders. The king was well attended, and among the best lords of

England that went with him was our neighbour Sir Alain de Bohun. We, the

monks of Reading, or such of us as had gone to the great city, journeyed

back to our abbey, in a great fall of autumnal rain; and when, at the

end of three days, we in uncomfortable case did reach the abbey, we

found that the swollen river had swept away good part of the mill which

we had built on the Kennet, at a short space from our house, and had

otherwise done us much mischief. Also was there seen a great falling

star, and there were heard in the heavens, on one very dark and gusty

night, some dolorous sounds, as of men wailing and lamenting. In a few

days more some sad but uncertain rumours did begin to reach our house;

but it was not until one stormy night in the early part of November,

when Sir Alain de Bohun on his way homeward stopped at our gates, that

we knew of a certainty that which had befallen. Ah, well-a-day, King

Stephen was dead! He who for well nigh nineteen years had not known one

day's perfect peace was now, inasmuch as the world and mortal man could

affect him, at peace for ever! And may God have mercy on his soul in the

world to come! After the politic conferences with the Earl of Flanders,

and the departure of the said earl for his own dominions, the king was

all of a sudden seized with the great pain of the Iliac passion, and

with an old disease which had more than once brought him to the brink of

the grave; and so, after short but acute suffering, he laid him down to

die, and did die in the house of the monks of Canterbury, on the five

and twentieth day of the kalends of October. _Sic mors rapit omne

genus._ And our true-hearted lord of Caversham, who was true unto death,

and who had tenderly nursed the dying king, conveyed the body to

Feversham, and placed it in the same grave with his beloved wife Maud,

and his son Stephen, in the goodly abbey which he and his queen had

built and endowed in that Kentish township; and having in this guise

done the last duty to his liege lord and king, and being by death

liberated from the oaths of fealty and allegiance, which he had never

broken by word or deed, Sir Alain, caring for none of the honours and

advancements which other lords were ready to struggle for at the coming

in of a new king, came quietly home, only hoping and praying that his

country would be happy under Henry Plantagenet.

King Stephen being gone, much evil was said of him on all sides and by

all parties: yea, his own partisans, in the expectation that such words

would be grateful to the ear of the new king, did affect to murmur and

lament that he should so long have kept the great Henricus from the

throne; and, generaliter, the great men did burthen the memory of

Stephen with the past miseries of the people of England, of which they

themselves had been the promoters. I have said it: the defunct king, in

the straits and troubles into which he had been driven by the greed,

ambition, and faithlessness of the baronage, had ofttimes done amiss,

and, specialiter, had much travailed churchmen: yet be it remembered

that he built more royal abbeys than any king that went before him; that

he founded hospitals for the poor sick; and that during the whole of his

troublous reign he laid no new tax or tallage upon the people; and that

he was of a nature so mild and merciful that notwithstanding the many

revolts and rebellions and treasons practised against him, he did never

put any great man to death. I, Felix, who had seen how large he was of

heart and how open of hand, and who had tasted of his bounty and

condescension, could not forget these things when, in a few days, after

saying a mass of Requiem for his soul, we chanted in our church a Te

Deum laudamus for his successor.