=Source.=--_The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, ed. Thorpe, vol. i., p. 382.
(Rolls Series.)
When the traitors perceived that he was a mild man, and soft and good,
and did no justice, then did they all wonder. They had done homage to
him and sworn oaths, but had held no faith; they were all forsworn
and brake their fealty; for every mighty man built his castles and
held them against him; and they filled the land full of castles. They
cruelly oppressed the wretched men of the land with castle-works. When
the castles were made, they filled them with devils and evil men. Then
they took those men whom they deemed to have any possessions, both by
night and by day, husbandmen and women, and put them in prison for gold
and silver, and tortured them with unspeakable torture, for never were
martyrs so tortured as they were. They hanged them up by the feet, and
smoked them with foul smoke; they hanged them by the thumbs or by
the head, and hung fires on their feet; they put knotted cords about
their heads, and twisted them so that it went to the brain. They put
them in dungeons, in which were adders and snakes and toads, and so
killed them. Some they put in a “crucet hus,” that is, in a chest that
was short and narrow and shallow, and put sharp stones therein, and
pressed the man therein, so that they brake all his limbs. In many of
the castles were ... neck-bonds, so that two or three men had enough to
bear one. It was made thus, that is, fastened to a beam; and they put
a sharp iron about the man’s throat and his neck, so that he might no
wise sit or lie or sleep, but must bear all that iron. Many thousands
they killed with hunger; I cannot and may not tell all the wounds or
all the tortures which they wrought on wretched men in this land; and
it lasted the nineteen winters while Stephen was king; and ever it was
worse and worse. They laid gelds on the towns continually ...; when the
wretched men had no more to give, they robbed and burned all the towns,
so that thou mightest well go all a day’s journey, and thou wouldst
never find a man settled in a town, nor the land tilled. Then was corn
dear, and meat and cheese and butter, for there was none in the land.
Wretched men died of hunger; some went seeking alms, who were sometime
rich men; some fled out of the land. Never yet had more wretchedness
been in the land, nor did heathen men ever do worse than they did; for
everywhere they spared neither church nor churchyard, but took all the
goods that were therein, and then burned the church and all together.
Nor spared they a bishop’s land, nor an abbot’s, nor a priest’s, but
robbed monks and clerks, and every man another who anywhere could. If
two or three men came riding to a town, all the township fled before
them, deeming that they were robbers. The bishops and clergy cursed
them ever, but nothing came thereof, for they were all accursed and
forsworn and lost. However a man tilled, the earth bare no corn, for
the land was all undone with such deeds, and they said openly that
Christ slept, and his saints. Such and more than we can say we endured
nineteen winters for our sins.