A Legend of Reading Abbey

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 Wallingf

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

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 b

mper hath seized him during his days of inactivity in this swampy and overflooded c

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 h

to allow a parley for a truce; and Henry Plantagenet, not being less politic t

th 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 neit

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, an

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 castl

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 ove

llingford, 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. Havin

een 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 knowin

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

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 di

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