STEPHEN. 1135-1154

DEATH OF HENRY I AND REIGN OF STEPHEN - THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARD

[Old English Chronicle ]

Although Henry I. had made the baronage swear fealty to the Empress Maud, his daughter, on his death his a nephew Stephen of Boulogne was chosen king.

An. M.C.XXXV. In this year king Henry went over sea at Lammas (Aug. 1st); and the second day, as he lay and slept in the ship, the day darkened over all lands, and the sun became as it were a three-night-old moon, and the stars about it at midday. Men were greatly wonder-stricken. and affrighted and said that a great thing should come hereafter. And so it befell ; for that same year the king died, on the day following after St. Andrew's mass day (Dec. 2nd), in Normandy. Then there was tribulation soon in the land; for every man that could forthwith robbed another. Then his son and his friends took his body and brought it to England, anti buried it at Reading. A good man he was, and there was great awe of him. No man durst say to him aught but good. In the meanwhile his nephew Stephen of Blois was come to England, and came to London, and the London folk received him, and sent after the archbishop William Corbeil, and hallowed him king on Mid-winter day. In this king's time all was strife, and evil, and rapine ; for against him soon rose the powerful men who were traitors. The first of all Baldwin de Redvers, who held Exeter against him ; and the king besieged it, and then Baldwin capitulated. Then the others took and held their castles against him and David, king of Scotland, took to vex him. Then, notwithstanding that, their messengers passed between them, and they came together and were reconciled; though it was to little purpose.

An. M.C.XXXVII. In this year king Stephen went over sea to Normandy, and was there received because they imagined that he would be such as his uncle was, and because he had got his treasures; but he distributed it and scattered it foolishly. Much had king Henry gathered of gold and silver, and no good was done for his soul thereof. When king Stephen came to England [an. 1139], he held an assembly at Oxford, and there he took the bishop Roger of Salisbury, and Alexander bishop of Lincoln, and the chancellor Roger, his nephew, and put them all into prison, till they gave up their castles. 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, mid forfeited their troth; for every powerful man made 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 took they those men that they imagined had any property, both by night and by day, peasant men and women, and put them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them with unutterable 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 strings about their heads, and writhed them so that it went to the brain, They put them in dungeons, in which were adders, and snakes, and toads, and killed them so. 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 break all his limbs. In many of the castles were [instruments called] a "loathly and grim "; these were neck-bonds, of which two or three men had enough to bear one. It was so made, that is, it was fastened to a beam; and they put sharp iron about the man's throat and his neck, so that he could not in any direction sit or lie, or sleep, but must bear all that iron. Many thousands they killed with hunger; I neither can nor may tell all the wounds or all the tortures which they inflicted on wretched men in this land; and that lasted the nineteen winters while Stephen was king; and ever it was worse and worse. They laid imposts on the towns continually, and called it censerie ; 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 shouldst never find a man sitting in a town, or the land tilled. Then was corn dear, and flesh, and cheese, and butter: for there was none in the land. Wretched men died of hunger; some went seeking alms who at one while were rich men; some fled out of the land. Never yet had more wretchednes, been in the land, nor did heathen men ever do worse than they did; for everywhere at times they forbore neither church nor churchyard, but took all the property that was therein, and then burned the church altogether. Nor forbore 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, imagining them to be robbers. The bishops and clergy constantly cursed them, but nothing came of it; for they were all accursed, and forsworn, and lost However a man tilled, the earth bare no corn; for the land was all fordone by such deeds: and they said openly that Christ and his saints slept. Such and more than we can say, we endured nineteen winters for our sins.

RICHARD OF HEXHAM: prior of Hexham after 1141. The work cited is called the Gesta Stephani or Acts of Stephen. David I, king of Scotland, who was the Empress Maud's uncle, invaded the north of England, partly to make good certain claims of his own, partly on behalf of his niece who was battling with Stephen for the crown of England.

When they had there made private confession, the archbishop enjoined on them and the whole populace a three days' fast with almsgiving, after which he solemnly absolved them, and gave them God's blessing and his own. And although he was himself so greatly reduced by age and infirmity, that lie had to be carried on a litter where need was, yet, in order to animate their courage, he would readily have accompanied them to the field of battle. But they compelled him to stay behind, begging that he would employ himself in interceding for them by prayers and alms, by vigils and fasts, and other sacred observances while they (as God would deign to aid them, and as their position demanded) would cheerfully go forth against his enemy, in defence of God's church, and of him who was his minister. So he consigned to them his cross, and the standard of St. Peter, and his retainers; and they proceeded to the town called Thirsk, from whence they despatched Robert de Bruce and Bernard de Balliol to the king of Scotland, who was then, as has been said, devastating the territory of St. Cuthbert. They very humbly and courteously besought him that he would at least desist from his acts of ferocity ; and faithfully promised him that if he would accede. to their request, they would obtain from the king of England the earldom of Northumberland, which he claimed for his son Henry. But he, together with his followers, with a hardened heart spurned their solicitations, and disdainfully taunted them. They therefore returned to their associates, Robert abjuring the homage he had rendered him, and Bernard the fealty which he had sworn to him on one occasion when he had been taken prisoner by him. All the nobles, therefore, of that province, and William Peverel and Geoffrey Halsalin from Nottinghamshire, and Robert de Ferrers from Derbyshire, and other eminent and sagacious men, made a compact among themselves, which they confirmed by oaths, that not one of them, in this difficulty, would desert another while he had the power to aid him and thus all would either perish or conquer together. At the same time the archbishop sent to them Ralph, surnamed Novellus, bishop of Orkney, with one of his archdeacons and other clergy, who, as his delegate, should impose penance and give absolution to the people who daily flocked to them from every quarter. He also sent to them, as he had promised, the priests with their parishioners.

While thus waiting the approach of the Scots, the scouts whom they had sent forward to reconnoitre returned, bringing the information that the king with his army had already passed the river Tees, and was ravaging their province in his wonted manner. They therefore hastened to resist them; and passing the village of Alverton [North Allerton], they arrived early in the morning at a plain distant from it about two miles. Some of them soon erected in the centre a frame which they brought, the mast of a ship, to which they gave the name of the Standard. On the top of this pole they hung a silver pyx containing the Host, and the banner of St. Peter the Apostle and John of Beverley and Wilfrid of Ripon, confessors and bishops. In doing this, their hope was that our Lord Jesus Christ, by the efficacy of his Body, might be their leader in the contest in which they were engaging in defence of His Church and their country. By this means they also provided for their men, that, in the event of their being cut off and separated from them, they might observe some certain and conspicuous rallying-point, by which they might rejoin their comrades, and where they would receive succour.

Scarcely, then, had they put themselves in battle array, when tidings were brought that the king of Scotland was close at hand with his whole force, ready and eager for the contest. The greater part of the knights, then dismounting, became foot soldiers, a chosen body of whom, interspersed with archers, were arranged in the front rank. The others, with the exception of those who were to dispose and rally the forces, mustered with the barons in the centre, near and round the standard, and were enclosed by the rest of the host who closed in on all sides. The troop of cavalry and the horses of the knights were stationed at a little distance, lest they should take fright at the shouting and uproar of the Scots. In the like manner, on the enemy's side, the king and almost all his followers were on foot, their horses being kept at a distance. In front of the battle were the Picts ; in the centre, the king with his knights and English; the rest of the barbarian host poured roaring around them.

As they advanced in this order to battle, the standard with its banners became visible at no great distance and at once the hearts of the king and his followers were overpowered by extreme terror and consternation; yet, persisting in their wickedness, they pressed on to accomplish their bad ends. On the octave of the Assumption of St. Mary, being Monday, the eleventh before the kalends of September (Aug. 22nd) between the first and third hours, the struggle of this battle was begun and finished. For numberless Picts being slain immediately on the first attack, the rest, throwing down their arms, disgracefully fled. The plain was strewn with corpses; very many were taken prisoners; the king and all the others took to flight; and at length, of that immense army all were either slain, captured, or scattered as sheep without a shepherd. They fled like persons bereft of reason, in a marvellous manner, into the adjoining district of their adversaries, increasing their distance from their own country, instead of retreating towards it. But wherever they were discovered, they were put to death like sheep for the slaughter; and thus, by the righteous judgment of God, those who had cruelly massacred multitudes, and left them unburied. and giving them neither their country's nor a foreign rite of burial, left them a prey to the dogs, the birds, arid the wild beasts - were either dismembered and torn to or decayed and putrefied in the open air. The king also, who, in time haughtiness of his mind and the power of his army, seemed a little before to reach with his head even to the stars of heaven, and threatened ruin to the whole amid greatest part of England, now dishonoured and meanly attended, barely escaped with his life, in the utmost ignominy and dismay. The power or Divine vengeance was also most plainly exhibited in this, that the army of the vanquished was incalculably greater than that of the conquerors. No estimate could be formed of the number slain ; for, as many affirm, of that army which came out of Scotland alone, it was computed by the survivors that more than ten thousand were missing and in various localities of the Deirans, Bernicians, Northumbriains, and Cumbrians, many more perished after the fight than fell in the battle.