ians, it would be easy to swell our
accounts of this reign into a large volume: but those incidents, so
little memorable in themselves, and so confused both in time and
place, could afford neither instruction nor entertainment to the
reader. It suffices to say, that the war was spread into every
quarter, and that those turbulent barons, who had already shaken off,
in a great measure, the restraint of government, having now obtained
the pretence of a public cause, carried on their devastations with
redoubled fury, exercised implacable vengeance on each other, and set
no bounds to their oppressions over the people. The castles of the
nobility were become receptacles of licensed robbers; who, sallying
forth day and night, committed spoil on the open country, on the
villages, and even on the cities, put the captives to torture, in
order to make them reveal their treasures; sold their persons to
slavery; and set fire to their houses, after they had pillaged them of
every thing valuable. The fierceness of their disposition, leading
them to commit wanton destruction, frustrated their rapacity of its
purpose; and the property and persons even of the ecclesiastics,
generally so much revered, were at last, from necessity, exposed to
the same outrage which had laid waste the rest of the kingdom. The
land was left untilled; the instruments of husbandry were destroyed or
abandoned; and a grievous famine, the natural result of those
disorders, affected equally both parties, and reduced the spoilers as
well as the defenceless people to the most extreme want and indigence
[z].
[FN [z] Chron. Sax. p. 238. W. Malmes. p. 185. Gest. Steph p. 961.]

[MN 1140.] After several fruitless negotiations and treaties of
peace, which never interrupted these destructive hostilities, there
happened at last an event, which seemed to promise some end of the
public calamities. Ralph, Earl of Chester, and his half-brother,
William de Roumara, partisans of Matilda, had surprised the castle of
Lincoln; but the citizens, who were better affected to Stephen, having
invited him to their aid, that prince laid close siege to the castle,
in hopes of soon rendering himself master of the place, either by
assault or by famine. The Earl of Gloucester hastened with an army to
the relief of his friends; and Stephen, informed of his approach, took
the field with a resolution of giving him battle. [MN 1141. 2d Feb.]
After a violent shock, the two wings of the