One night in December, when the ground was covered with snow, Matilda quitted the castle at midnight, attended by four knights, who, as well as herself, were clothed in white. More fortunate than on the previous occasion, the party passed through the lines of their enemies entirely unobserved, and crossed the Thames, which was frozen over. The adventurous daughter of Beauclerc then pursued her way, sometimes on foot, sometimes on horseback, to Wallingford, where she joined the army of her son and the Earl of Gloucester.
After having taken Oxford Castle, Stephen encountered the forces of the Earl of Gloucester at Wilton, and was defeated, the king himself having a narrow escape of a second imprisonment. A desultory warfare ensued, which lasted during three years, without any important advantage to either side. Prince Henry remained during this time at Bristol Castle, in the company of his uncle, the Earl of Gloucester, and in 1147 returned to Normandy.
Statue of Stephen in the Choir of York Cathedral
Soon after his departure, Robert of Gloucester died of an illness resulting from alternate excesses and privations. Deprived of the aid of her half-brother, who had governed her affairs with undoubted ability, Matilda found her position become every day less secure. One by one her most faithful partisans fell away, stricken down by disease, or weary of the contest; and among those who died was the Earl of Hereford, one of the ablest and most powerful defenders of her cause. At length the ex-empress determined to pass over into Normandy, there to concert with her husband and her son fresh measures for renewing the struggle. Emboldened by her absence, Stephen made vigorous attempts to re-establish his power upon a firm basis; and for this purpose ho endeavoured by stratagem, as well as by force, to obtain possession of various strongholds which had been seized and fortified by the barons. The efforts thus made to reduce these haughty chiefs to submission met with little success, and the king's own adherents were ill-disposed to support a policy which they foresaw might one day be extended to themselves.
On the death of Innocent II. (September 24, 1143), the office of Legate of the Holy See was transferred from the Bishop of Winchester to Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury. The archbishop, having proceeded to the Council of Rheims in opposition to the royal command, was banished from the court. This impolitic act of Stephen was attended by consequences which show the extraordinary power possessed by the clergy over the rude and licentious men of that age. Hugh Bigod, the Earl of Norfolk, one of the adherents of Matilda, received the exiled prelate under his protection; and Theobald issued a sentence of excommunication against all the followers of the king, and the whole of the country which acknowledged his rule was declared without the pale of the Church. The order was obeyed by the clergy to the letter: the churches were closed, the services of religion suspended, and men died unhouselled in consequence of the refusal of the priests to perform their functions.
The ruthless Normans, familiar from their childhood with bloodshed, trembled before what they regarded as the wrath of Heaven; and the enslaved English regarded as their worst misery the decree which deprived them of ghostly consolation. While the land was suffering from disorders—which in this history have been briefly glanced at, but which are fully described in the pages of the chroniclers—the stately edifices of religion scattered throughout the country attracted to themselves, as to a centre, not only all the superstition, but the piety, the learning, and the virtue of the age. Built on the bank of some gentle stream, defended from storms by surrounding hills or dense woods, rose the solemn walls of the abbey church, gladdening the eyes of the traveller with the certainty of rest and protection: the one peaceful spot which, amidst the surrounding storm and violence, offered shelter to the weary, and pointed the hope of the sorrowing to heaven.
Those charitable institutions, which in later and happier times had a separate existence, were, in the twelfth century, included within the walls of the religious houses. Each monastery of note contained its hospital; and the study of medicine was cultivated by the monks as well as by the women of that age. When the terrible disease of leprosy was carried into this country from Palestine—an event which appears to date from the time of the First Crusade—various hospitals, which partook of the hallowed character of monastic establishments, were built for the reception of the sufferers. The leper, cut off by law from all intercourse with general society—as is the case still in countries where this scourge prevails—was received into these houses, where, in the company of his brethren in calamity, and subjected to no restraints but those of the conventional rule, he might lead his monotonous life engaged in the services of religion, and in the enjoyment at least of comfort and tranquillity.
The hospitals attached to the monasteries also received within their walls those who were wounded in the frequent battles or forays of that turbulent period; and it would appear that those who needed the surgical assistance of the monks in these and similar cases were tended with a degree of care and kindly feeling in agreeable contrast to the common temper of the age, and with all the skill of
