left the latter a captive
in the hands of his enemies, while Matilda was received throughout the
land as its "Lady." But the disdain with which she repulsed the claim of
London to the enjoyment of its older privileges called its burghers to
arms; her resolve to hold Stephen a prisoner roused his party again to
life, and she was driven to Oxford to be besieged there in 1142 by
Stephen himself, who had obtained his release in exchange for Earl Robert
after the capture of the Earl in a battle at Winchester. She escaped from
the castle, but with the death of Robert her struggle became a hopeless
one, and in 1148 she withdrew to Normandy. The war was now a mere chaos
of pillage and bloodshed. The royal power came to an end. The royal
courts were suspended, for not a baron or bishop would come at the king's
call. The bishops met in council to protest, but their protests and
excommunications fell on deafened ears. For the first and last time in
her history England was in the hands of the baronage, and their outrages
showed from what horrors the stern rule of the Norman kings had saved
her. Castles sprang up everywhere. "They filled the land with castles,"
say the terrible annals of the time. "They greatly oppressed the wretched
people by making them work at these castles, and when they were finished
they filled them with devils and armed men." In each of these
robber-holds a petty tyrant ruled like a king. The strife for the Crown
had broken into a medley of feuds between baron and baron, for none could
brook an equal or a superior in his fellow. "They fought among themselves
with deadly hatred, they spoiled the fairest lands with fire and rapine;
in what had been the most fertile of counties they destroyed almost all
the provision of bread." For fight as they might with one another, all
were at one in the plunder of the land. Towns were put to ransom.
Villages were sacked and burned. All who were deemed to have goods,
whether men or women, were carried off and flung into dungeons and
tortured till they yielded up their wealth. No ghastlier picture of a
nation's misery has ever been painted than that which closes the English
Chronicle whose last accents falter out amidst the horrors of the time.
"They hanged up men by their feet and smoked them with foul smoke. Some
were hanged up by their thumbs, others by the head, and burning things
were hung on to their feet. They put knotted strings about men's heads,
and writhed them till