A Legend of Reading Abbey

Before the swallows made their next return to our meads and river sides, the flames of war were again kindled in our near neighbourhood. When that I heard Sir Ingelric had stolen back into 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 Wallingford with great supply of munitions of war, I did foresee that the year eleven hundred and fifty-three would be a year of storm and trouble to Reading Abbey, and to all the country besides. Sir Ingelric's return was soon notified to us by the burning of divers villages between Reading and Speen, and by the sudden plunder and devastation of some of our own outlying 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 Countess Matilda, but for her son Henry; and that the said Sir Brian had ravaged well nigh all the country from Wallingford to Oxenford, making a great prey of men and cattle.

Sir Alain de Bohun and our stout-hearted Abbat Reginald collected such force as they could, and marched in quest of Sir Ingelric; but that cruel knight fled at their approach, and then retreated into the far west. King Stephen made an appeal to the wealthy and warlike citizens of London, who were ever truer to him than were his great barons, and being well furnished with arms and men, and the great machines proper for the sieges of strong places, the king went straight to Wallingford with a determination not to remove thence until he had reduced that terrible castle. This time he came not unto our abbey, but the lord abbat sent some of our retainers to assist in the great siege; and as all the lords that were true to the king marched with the best of their vassals to Wallingford, a great army was collected there. Of the people of that vicinage, every free man that was at all able to work repaired to the king's camp, and offered his labour for the capture and destruction of Brian Fitzcount's den. A deep trench was speedily cut all round the castle, and such bulwarks and palisadoes were made that none could come out of the place or enter therein; and catapults were in readiness to batter the walls, and mines were digging that would have caused the keep to totter and fall. Certes, the emprise was close to a successful issue, when tidings were brought that Henry Plantagenet had landed in the south-west with one hundred and forty knights, and three thousand foreign foot soldiers, that all the great barons of the west were proclaiming him to be the lawful king of England, and were joining his standard, and that he was moving with a mighty force to lay siege to Malmesbury. King Stephen had found no more faith abroad than he had found 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 brave as his young rival, and was transported with wrath at seeing how many barons who had repeatedly sworn allegiance to him were in array against him; moreover, Prince Eustace was with his father, and, like a valorous and passionate youth, was eager for the fight; and of a certainty there would have been a terrible and bloody battle, if battle could have been joined at the first confronting of these two forces; but a heavy and long-continuing rain had swollen all the rivers and brooks, and had poured such a volume of water into Thamesis that there was no crossing it. Therefore lay the two mighty armies opposite to each other for the space of several days; and during that interval certain of our prelates bestirred themselves as peace-makers, and sundry great lords on either side said that verily it was time this unnatural war should have an end. But Henry Plantagenet did want for his immediate wearing the kingly crown of England, and Stephen had vowed by the glory of God to keep that crown on his head until his death, and none durst speak to him of a present surrender of it. When the waters somewhat abated the king marshalled his host, as if determined to come at his foe by crossing the river at a ford not far off; but upon mounting his war-horse, which had carried him in many battles, the steed stumbled and fell, not without peril to his rider. The king mounted again, laughing as at a trifling accident; but when the horse fell a second time under him, his countenance became troubled. Nevertheless he essayed a third time, and for a third time the steed fell flat to the earth as though he had been pierced through poitrail and heart by an arrow. Then did the king turn pale, and his nobles 'gan whisper that this was a fearful omen.

"By our Ladie St. Mary," quoth Prince Eustace, "the steed hath grown old, and distemper hath seized him during his days of inactivity in this swampy and overflooded country! This is all the omen, and the death of the poor horse will be all our loss."

And the resolute young prince would have mounted his father on another steed, and have marched on to the ford, and then straight to battle. But the Earl of Arundel, being much inclined to peace, and a bold and eloquent man, took advantage of the consternation which the omen or horse-sickness had 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 his mother to the throne; that the country was all too weary of these wars, and that the king ought by experience to know the little trust that was to be put in many of his present followers. "But I will not die a discrowned king," said Stephen. "Nor shalt thou," replied the great Earl of Arundel.

After many entreaties and prayers, the kingly mind of Stephen yielded so far as to allow a parley for a truce; and Henry Plantagenet, not being less politic than warlike, entered upon a convention, and then agreed to confer with Stephen.

The place for conference was so appointed that the river Thamesis, where it narrows a little above Wallingford, parted the two princes and the great lords that were with 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 neither party was to attempt any enterprise of war, but both were to discuss and amicably settle the question of Duke Henry's right to the crown upon the demise of Stephen.

Prince Eustace had not been a prince if he had quietly submitted to an arrangement which went to deprive him of the succession to a great kingdom: he burst suddenly away from the king's camp, calling upon those who had taken the oaths to him to follow him to the east. Not many rode off with him; but our young Lord Arthur, feeling the obligations of his replicated vows and the ties of duty and friendship, would not quit his master; nor did his father Sir Alain, who had placed him in the prince's service, make any effort to restrain him. As for the good lord of Caversham himself, he returned to his home with the double determination of observing the truce, and of not giving up his allegiance to King Stephen, unless the king should voluntarily release him therefrom; for, much as he sighed for the return of peace, Sir Alain prized his honour, and did never think that a good settlement of the kingdom could be obtained through falsehood and perjury. But woful apprehensions and sadness did again fall upon the house at Caversham, for the course taken by Prince Eustace was full of danger to him and his few adherents, and it was reported that his great anger and desperation had driven him mad. But short was the career of that hapless young prince, who, though born to a kingdom, lived not to see anything but the calamities thereof. I wis those men who had most flattered him, and had taken oaths to him as to the lawful heir to this glorious crown of England, did speak most evil of him in the days of his adversity, and after his death. I, who knew him and conversed with him oft times, did ever find him a youth of a right noble nature, valorous and merciful like his father, and as devout and friendly 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, and it might not have been so much in vengeance for Eustace's great sin in robbing the monks of St. Edmund's Bury of their corn, as in mercy to the suffering people of England, that the son of King Stephen was so suddenly smitten and removed. The monks of St. Edmund did, however, give out that it was their saint who slew him for his sin, causing the first morsel of the stolen victual he put into his mouth to drive him into a frenzy, whereof he died. Others there were who accounted for his opportune death by alleging that some subtile poison had been administered to him; but of this was there never any proof. Our young Lord Arthur, without denying the great provocation he had given unto St. Edmund, did always think that his brain had been touched ever since his father held the conference above Wallingford with Duke Henry, and that a great gust of passion killed him. But whatever was the cause of his death, and however sad was that event in itself, he was surely dead, and it was just as sure that the kingdom would be the better for it. If few had followed him while he was alive, still fewer stayed to do honour to his remains; but Arthur, with a very sincere grief, and with all respect and piety, carried the body of his master to the sea-side, and thence by water into Kent, and saw it interred at Feversham by the side of Queen Maud, with all the rites and obsequies of holy church. Fidelity could not go beyond this; the great arbiter, Death, had freed him from his allegiance and vows to the prince, and so from the honoured grave in Feversham Abbey, Arthur de Bohun rode with all possible speed unto Caversham. So true was it, that nothing that man could do could keep Alice and him long asunder.

Many of our wicked castle builders, who had not always respected the truce of God, would not now be bound by the truce concluded between two mortal princes; and when the term of that suspension had expired, some of the barons on either side would have renewed the war on a grand scale, and have carried it into all parts of the kingdom. Some few sieges were commenced, and some hostile movements made in the field, by King Stephen and Duke Henry; but since the unhappy death of Prince Eustace, the king cared not much about keeping the crown in his family, for he had but one other lawful son, and this son, the gentle-tempered William, was only a boy, and was without ambition; for his eyes had not been dazzled by any near prospect of the crown, and none of the baronage had ever sworn fealty to him. And thus, when the peace-makers renewed their blessed endeavours, King Stephen was easily induced to agree that Duke Henry should be his successor in this kingdom, provided that he left him a peaceable possession of the disputed throne for the term of his natural life, and bound himself to fulfil a few other engagements. The king's brother, the Bishop of Winchester, did now join with his old enemy, Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, in urging this accord, and on either side the great barons recommended the 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 castle-builders, that the donjons which remained must all down, and that the vengeance of the law must fall upon the robbers, whether they had been, or had pretended to be, followers of Matilda, or Stephen, or Duke Henry himself; for, being now acknowledged heir to the crown, Henry wished not to come into a wasted and impoverished land, and well he knew, at all times, that the prosperity of the people maketh the wealth, and power, and glory of the ruler. Those castles in the west, which had been given up to him by their builders, were presently levelled with the earth; and even Brian Fitzcount was warned that he must quit his strong house at Wallingford, or abide the most fearful consequences. Some of the cruel oppressors of their country came in of their own will, and submitted to King Stephen and the law; but others held out stiffly, denying all allegiance whether to the king regnant or to Duke Henry as his successor; and in this sort the poor people in divers parts continued to be harrowed, and plundered, and captured, and tortured, as in the foregone time. Nay, some of our wicked barons, making league with the rapinous princes and wild chiefs of the Welsh mountains, did continue to keep the open fields in the western parts, and to desolate the land from the river Severn even unto the river Mersey.

Many were the private discourses which King Stephen held with the hopeful Plantagenet, for Stephen's heart was all for the commonalty of England, and he trusted that he could give such instruction and advice to Henry as would aid that prince in making his future government firm, and, at home, pacific, and in that sort a blessing to the people. But the Plantagenet had solemnly pledged his faith by treaty and by oath to leave unto Stephen, so long as he should live, the full exercise of 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 over to Normandie. Foul rumours there were, as that Stephen's young son with a party of Flemings would have waylaid the duke on Barham downs, and have there slaughtered him; but I wis all this was but a fable, for the boy William was too young for such matters, and being of a gentle and unambitious nature, and too well knowing that the crown of England had been a crown of thorns to his father, he was more than content with the lands and honours secured unto him by the Charta Conventionum.

Also was it nigh upon the time that William, archbishop of York, a kinsman of King Stephen, who had been deprived by the pope in the year eleven hundred and forty-seven, and who had been reinstated after the truce concluded at Wallingford, 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. Having no light wherewith to penetrate the darkness of this mystery, I will not affirm that King Stephen's kinsman was so disposed of; but verily the malice of men's hearts was great, and there was much secret poisoning in these times!

Stephen being thus left to govern by himself, sundry of our great men, having from that which they had seen and heard of Prince Henry come to the conclusion that if he should be king he would keep a bit in their mouths and keep a strong rein in his own hands, did repair to the king who had so often been 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 knowing the trust that was to be put in the faith and steadiness of these men, said, "There hath been war enough, and too much woe!" and he would not give his ear unto them, but did command forces to be gathered for putting down the castle-builders and the robbers that had allied themselves with the Welsh.

And of a surety in these his last days King Stephen betook himself wholly to repair the ruins of the state, and heal the great afflictions of the church. He made a progress into most parts of the kingdom to reform the monstrous irregularities which had arisen by long war, to curb the too great baronial power, to get back to our abbeys and churches the things whereof they had been despoiled, and to speak and deal comfortably with all manner of peace-loving men. Some castles he reduced by force, others he terrified into submission, and others were taken by a few good lords like Sir Alain de Bohun. In all these occurrents nothing was heard of our impenitent neighbour Sir Ingelric, save that his wife the dark ladie of the castle had died, and that he himself was thought to have gone into the west. Of that greater and far more 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 methods were taken by it and good laws passed. I, who went unto London city with our lord abbat, did see with mine own eyes the respect which was now paid unto the eldermen of great towns and boroughs, and likewise to the franklins, whether mixed by the marriages of their fathers or grandfathers with Norman women, or whether of the old and unmixed Saxon stock, the number of these last being as a score to one; and then did I say to myself that if these things continued, the day might arrive when the burghers and free plebeians of England might be something in the state. Nay, I did even dream that in process of time the collar might be taken from the neck of our serf, and the cultivator of the soil be no longer a villein, but a free man. But I concealed this my bright vision, lest it should expose me to censure and mockery.

When this great council at London was broken up King Stephen made repair unto Dover to meet and confer with his ancient ally and friend the Earl of Flanders. The king was well attended, and among the best lords of England that went with him was our neighbour Sir Alain de Bohun. We, the monks of Reading, or such of us as had gone to the great city, journeyed back to our abbey, in a great fall of autumnal rain; and when, at the end of three days, we in uncomfortable case did reach the abbey, we found that the swollen river had swept away good part of the mill which we had built on the Kennet, at a short space from our house, and had otherwise done us much mischief. Also was there seen a great falling star, and there were heard in the heavens, on one very dark and gusty night, some dolorous sounds, as of men wailing and lamenting. In a few days more 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 die in the house of the monks of Canterbury, on the five and twentieth day of the kalends of October. Sic mors rapit omne genus. And our true-hearted lord of Caversham, who was true unto death, and who had tenderly nursed the dying king, conveyed the body to Feversham, and placed it in the same grave with his beloved wife Maud, and his son Stephen, in the goodly abbey which he and his queen had built and endowed in that Kentish township; and having in this guise done the last duty to his liege lord and king, and being by death liberated from the oaths of fealty and allegiance, which he had never broken by word or deed, Sir Alain, caring for none of the honours and advancements which other lords were ready to struggle for at the coming in of a new king, came quietly home, only hoping and praying that his country would be happy under Henry Plantagenet.

King Stephen being gone, much evil was said of him on all sides and by all parties: yea, his own partisans, in the expectation that such words would be grateful to the ear of the new king, did affect to murmur and lament that he should so long have kept the great Henricus from the throne; and, generaliter, the great men did burthen the memory of Stephen with the past miseries of the people of England, of which they themselves had been the promoters. I 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 that he was of a nature so mild and merciful that notwithstanding the many revolts and rebellions and treasons practised against him, he did never put any great man to death. I, Felix, who had seen how large he was of heart and how open of hand, and who had tasted of his bounty and condescension, could not forget these things when, in a few days, after saying a mass of Requiem for his soul, we chanted in our church a Te Deum laudamus for his successor.

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