=Source.=--William of Newburgh, _Historia rerum Anglicarum_, ed.
Howlett, vol. i., p. 44. (Rolls Series, Chronicles of Stephen, Henry
II., and Richard I.)
At the same time king Stephen seized Geoffrey de Mandeville in his
court at St. Albans, not indeed honourably and according to the law of
nations, but for his deserts and out of fear, with an eye rather to the
expedient than to the chivalrous. For Geoffrey was a man of consummate
daring and of equal strength and cunning, strengthening his hold on
the famous Tower of London with two noteworthy added fortifications,
and achieving great ends by an ingenious subtlety. For these reasons
he inspired fear in the king himself, who, however, was at pains to
conceal his sense of wrong suffered at the other’s hands, and watched
for a convenient season to take his revenge.
Some years before the king had acquired the treasures of the bishop
of Salisbury, and, despatching a large sum of money to Louis, king of
the French, had married his son Eustace to Constance, Louis’ sister,
planning by a match with so great a prince to strengthen his son’s
chance of succession against the count of Anjou and his sons; and
Constance was in London with the queen, her mother-in-law. When the
queen would have gone elsewhere with her daughter-in-law, the aforesaid
Geoffrey, then master of the Tower, prevented her, and seizing her
daughter-in-law out of her hands, in spite of her stout resistance,
kept her, permitting the queen to depart with ignominy. Afterwards
at the king’s demand he reluctantly resigned his noble booty to her
father-in-law, who for the time dissembled his just indignation. Now
this wrong seemed to have been at length forgotten, when the barons
assembled at the royal summons at St. Albans, and among them appeared
this bandit; whereupon, forthwith seizing the opportunity, the king
gave vent to his righteous anger and putting Geoffrey in bonds,
extorted from him the Tower of London with the two other fortresses
which he held. Stripped of his defences, but released, his incapacity
to rest, his mighty spirit, his almost incomparable resource, and his
extraordinary genius for evil, led him to gather together an impious
crew, at whose head he burst into the monastery of Ramsey; without
fear, he drove out the monks, and turned the famous and holy place into
a den of thieves, and the sanctuary of God into the home of the devil,
ravaging the country round with constant sallies and expeditions.
Success increased his confidence, and going further afield, he harassed
and menaced king Stephen with the boldest assaults. During this wild
outburst it seemed as if God was asleep and took no thought for human
affairs, or even his own, that is, the church; and pious men cried
out of their trouble, “Arise, why sleepest thou, O Lord?” But, as the
apostle says, after God endured with much patience vessels of wrath fit
for destruction, “he arose,” as the prophet says, “as from sleep, and
smote his enemies in their hinder parts,” that is, in the latter years
of those whose earlier career seemed prosperous. In a word, shortly
before the destruction of that impious wretch, as is proved by the true
testimony of many, the walls of the church into which he had burst,
and of the adjacent cloister, sweated with real blood, by which, as
afterwards appeared, was signified both the enormity of his crime and
the now imminent judgment upon the enormity. But since the evil men,
given over to a reprobate mind, were in no wise frightened by a portent
so horrible, their abandoned leader, while storming a castle of his
enemies among the serried ranks of his followers, was struck on the
head by the arrow of a common footman; and from that wound the reckless
fighter, though at first he made light of it, died after a few days,
and took with him to hell the burden of the church’s anathema, from
which he could never be absolved.
His two most cruel followers, of whom one was over the knights and
the other over the footmen, are reported to have perished by diverse
mishaps. The one died by a fall from his horse, his head being crushed
on the ground and his brains scattered; the other, Rainer by name,
the chief destroyer and burner of churches, when crossing the sea
with his wife, brought the ship to a standstill in mid ocean by the
weight of his sins. The sailors and others who were crossing at the
same time were reduced to stupefaction, but, following the ancient
example, cast lots, and the lot fell upon Rainer; and when, to prevent
the possibility of accident, they cast lots a second and a third time
with the same result, it was declared to be the judgment of God. So,
in order that all might not perish with him and on his account, he was
put out in a boat with his wife and his ill-gotten wealth. The ship
immediately leapt forward and was borne on its usual course. But the
boat sank under the weight of the sinner, and was overwhelmed in the
waves.