the very place where Hereward had erected a fortress of wood. This district, always considered formidable by the Norman authority, on account of the facilities it presented for hostile assemblage and defence, had been placed by Henry I. under the authority of a bishop, whose superintendence was to be combined with that of the earl or viscount of the province.2 The first bishop of the new diocese of Ely was the same Hervé whom the Welsh had expelled from Bangor; the second was Lenoir, who discovered and denounced the great conspiracy of the English in the year 1137. It was not out of personal zeal for king Stephen, but from patriotism as a Norman, that the latter served the king against the Saxons; and as soon as the Normans had declared against Stephen, Lenoir joined them, and undertook to make the islands of his diocese a rendezvous for the friends of Matilda.3

Stephen attacked his adversaries in this camp as William the Conqueror had formerly attacked the Saxon refugees there. He constructed bridges of boats, over which his cavalry passed, and completely routed the troops of Baldwin de Reviers and bishop Lenoir. The bishop fled to Gloucester, where the daughter of Henry I. then was with her principal partisans. Her friends in the west, encouraged by the king's absence, repaired the breaches in their castlewalls, or, transforming into fortresses the towers of the great churches, furnished them with war-machines, and dug moats round them, even in the churchyards, so that the bodies were laid bare and their bones scattered.5 The Norman prelates did not scruple to participate in these military operations, and were not the least active in torturing the English to make them give ransom. They were seen, as in the first years of the Conquest, mounted upon war-horses, clad in armour, and a lance or bâton in their hands, directing the works and the attacks, or casting lots for the spoil.6

1 Thomas Eliensis, Hist. Eliensis; Anglia Sacra, i. 620.

2 Petrus Blesensis, Ingulfi Continuat., apud Rer. Anglic. Script., (Gale)

i. 117.

3 Considerata...mira et insuperabili loci munitione. (Gesta Steph., p. 949.) 4 Ib. p. 950. Thomas Eliensis, loc. cit.

5 Cemiterium in castelli sustollebatur vallum parentum que et cognatorum corpora, alia semiputrefacta, alia recentissime humata, crudele spectaculum, ab imo...retracta. (Gest. Steph., loc. cit.) 6 Ib. p. 962.

The bishop of Chester and the bishop of Lincoln were remarkable among the most warlike. The latter rallied the troops beaten at the camp of Ely, and re-formed, upon the eastern coast, an army which king Stephen came to attack, but with less success than before; his troops, victorious at Ely, dispersed near Lincoln: abandoned by those who surrounded him, the king defended himself alone for some time; but at last, obliged to yield, he was taken to Gloucester, to the quarters of the countess of Anjou, who, by the advice of her council of war, imprisoned him in the donjon of Bristol. This defeat ruined the royal cause. The Normans of Stephen's party, seeing him conquered and captive, passed over in crowds to Matilda. His own brother, Henry, bishop of Winchester, declared himself for the victorious faction; and the Saxon peasants, who equally detested both parties, profited by the misfortune of the conquered to despoil them and maltreat them in their flight.1

The grand-daughter of William the Conqueror made her triumphal entry into the city of Winchester; bishop Henry received her at the gates, at the head of the clergy of all the churches. She took possession of the royal ornaments, and of Stephen's treasure,2 and convoked a great council of prelates, earls, barons, and knights. The assembly decided that Matilda should assume the title of queen, and the bishop who presided pronounced the following form:-" Having first invoked, as was befitting, the assistance of Almighty God, we elect, for lady of England and Normandy, the daughter of the glorious, rich, good, and pacific king Henry, and promise her faith and support."3 But the good fortune of queen Matilda soon made her disdainful and arrogant; she ceased to solicit the counsel of her old friends, and treated with little favour those of her adversaries who sought to make peace with her. The authors of her elevation, when they requested aught of her, often underwent a refusal; and when they bowed before her, says an old historian, she did not rise to acknowledge the homage. This conduct cooled the zeal of her most devoted partisans, and the majority of them, 2 Ib. p. 954.

1 Ib. p. 953.

3 Acta Concilii Winton., apud Wilkins, Concilia Magne Britann., i. 420. 4. Non ipsis ante se inclinantibus reverenter ut decuit assurgere. (Gest. Stephani, p. 954.)

quitting her, without, however, declaring for the dethroned king, awaited the result in repose.1

She

From Winchester, the new queen went to London. was the daughter of a Saxon, and the Saxon citizens, from a kind of national sympathy, were better pleased to see her in their city, than they were to see there the king of pure foreign race; but the enthusiasm of these serfs of the Conquest made little impression on the proud heart of the wife of the count of Anjou, and the first words she addressed to the citizens of London, were a demand for an enormous subsidy. The citizens, whom the devastations of war and the exactions of Stephen had reduced to such distress that they were in fear of a speedy famine, intreated the queen to pity them, and to wait until they had recovered from their present misery, ere she imposed new tributes on them. "The king

has left us nothing," said the deputies from the citizens, submissively. "I understand," said the daughter of Henry I., disdainfully; "you have given all to my adversary; you have conspired with him against me; and you would have me spare you. Obliged to pay the tax, the citizens of London seized the occasion to present an humble petition to the queen: "Noble lady," said they, "let it be permitted us to follow the good laws of king Edward, thy great uncle, instead of those of thy father the king Henry, which are harsh and ill to bear."3 But, as if she blushed for her maternal ancestors and abnegated her Anglo-Saxon descent, Matilda became furious at this petition, treated those who dared to address it to her as the most insolent of serfs, and threatened them fiercely. Deeply aggrieved, but dissimulating their anger, the citizens returned to the Guildhall, where the Normans, become less suspicious, allowed them to assemble to arrange among themselves the payment of the taxes; for the government had adopted the custom of imposing these upon the towns in the mass, without troubling themselves as to the manner in which the impost should be raised by individual contributions.

Queen Matilda waited in full security, either in the Tower or in the new palace of William Rufus at Westminster, for

1 Gest. Stephani, p. 954.

Se illi supplices obtulerunt. (Ib.) 3 Florent. Wigorn. Continuat., p. 677

4 Gesta Stephani, loc. sup. cit.

the citizens to come and present to her on their knees the gold she had demanded, when suddenly the bells of the town rang the alarm: an immense crowd filled the streets and squares. From every house issued a man, armed with the first weapon that had come to hand. An ancient author likens the multitude who thus tumultuously assembled to bees quitting a hive. The queen and her Norman and Angevin barons, thus surprised, and not daring to risk, in the narrow and tortuous streets, an encounter in which the superiority of arms and of military skill could be of no avail, speedily mounted their horses and fled. They had hardly passed the last houses of the suburbs, when a troop of English hastened to the lodgings they had occupied, broke open the doors, and not finding the men, seized upon all they had left behind. The queen hastened along the Oxford road with her barons and knights; from time to time some of these quitted her to retreat in greater safety alone by cross roads and bye paths; she entered Oxford with her brother the earl of Gloucester, and the few who had followed the road she pursued as the safest, or who forgot their own danger in hers.1

This danger, however, was not great; the people of London, satisfied with having driven the new queen of England from their walls, did not pursue her. Their insurrection, the result of an ebullition of fury, without any previous project and without connexion with any other movement, did not constitute the first act of a national insurrection. The expulsion of Matilda and her adherents, however, while it did not profit the English, served the partisans of king Stephen, who entering London, occupied the city and garrisoned it with their troops, under colour of alliance with the citizens. The wife of the imprisoned king repaired hither also, and took up her quarters in the Tower; all that the citizens obtained was permission to enrol a thousand of their number, with helmet and hauberk, among the troops who assembled in the name of Stephen, to serve, as auxiliaries of the Normans, under William and Roger de la Chesnaye.2

The bishop of Winchester, seeing his brother's party re

1 Gesta Stephani, loc. sup. cit.

2 Mille cum galeis et loricis ornatissime instructi. (Gesta Stephani, p. 956.)

gaining some strength, deserted the opposite faction, and declared once more for the prisoner of Bristol; he unfurled the king's flag on Winchester castle and on his own episcopal palace, which he had fortified and embattled like a castle. Robert of Gloucester and the partisans of Matilda came to besiege it. The garrison of the castle, constructed in the centre of the city, set fire to the surrounding houses, in order to harass the besiegers; and in the mean time, the London army attacking the latter unexpectedly, compelled them to retire to the churches, which were set on fire as a mode of driving them out. Robert of Gloucester was taken prisoner, and his followers dispersed. Barons and knights threw aside their arms, and travelling on foot to avoid recognition, traversed, under assumed names, the towns and villages. But, besides the king's partisans, who followed them closely, they encountered on their way other enemies, the Saxon peasants, furious against them in their defeat, as they had been just before against the opposite party, under similar circumstances; they stopped the proud Normans, whom, despite their efforts to disguise themselves, they recognised by their language, and compelled them to run before them, by blows of their whips. The archbishop of Canterbury, other bishops, and a number of seigneurs, were maltreated in this way and despoiled of their horses and clothes. Thus, this war was for the native English at once a source of misery and of joy—of that frantic joy we feel amidst suffering, in returning evil for evil. The grandson of a man who had died at Hastings, now found himself master of the life of a Norman baron or prelate, and the English women, who turned the spinning-wheel in the service of noble Norman dames, laughed as they heard related the sufferings of queen Matilda on her departure from Oxford; how she had fled with three knights, on foot, and by night, through the snow; and how she had fearfully passed the enemy's posts, trembling at the least sound of men and horses, or at the voice of the sentinels.1

Soon after the brother of Matilda, Robert earl of Gloucester, had been taken prisoner, the two parties concluded an agreement, by which the king and the earl were exchanged,

1 Gesta Stephani, p. 959.