they went to the brain. They put men into prisons
where adders and snakes and toads were crawling, and so they tormented
them. Some they put into a chest short and narrow and not deep and that
had sharp stones within, and forced men therein so that they broke all
their limbs. In many of the castles were hateful and grim things called
rachenteges, which two or three men had enough to do to carry. It was
thus made: it was fastened to a beam and had a sharp iron to go about a
man's neck and throat, so that he might noways sit, or lie, or sleep, but
he bore all the iron. Many thousands they starved with hunger."

[Sidenote: Religious Revival]

It was only after years of this feudal anarchy that England was rescued
from it by the efforts of the Church. The political influence of the
Church had been greatly lessened by the Conquest: for pious, learned, and
energetic as the bulk of the Conqueror's bishops were, they were not
Englishmen. Till the reign of Henry the First no Englishman occupied an
English see. This severance of the higher clergy from the lower
priesthood and from the people went far to paralyze the constitutional
influence of the Church. Anselm stood alone against Rufus, and when
Anselm was gone no voice of ecclesiastical freedom broke the silence of
the reign of Henry the First. But at the close of Henry's reign and
throughout the reign of Stephen England was stirred by the first of those
great religious movements which it was to experience afterwards in the
preaching of the Friars, the Lollardism of Wyclif, the Reformation, the
Puritan enthusiasm, and the mission work of the Wesleys. Everywhere in
town and country men banded themselves together for prayer: hermits
flocked to the woods: noble and churl welcomed the austere Cistercians, a
reformed offshoot of the Benedictine order, as they spread over the moors
and forests of the North. A new spirit of devotion woke the slumbers of
the religious houses, and penetrated alike to the home of the noble and
the trader. London took its full share in the revival. The city was proud
of its religion, its thirteen conventual and more than a hundred
parochial churches. The new impulse changed its very aspect. In the midst
of the city Bishop Richard busied himself with the vast cathedral church
of St. Paul which Bishop Maurice had begun; barges came up the river with
stone from Caen for the great arches that moved the popular wonder, while
street and lane were being levelle