ar went the King Stephen over sea to Normandy,
and there was received; for that they concluded that he should be
all such as the uncle was; and because he had got his treasure:
but he dealed it out, and scattered it foolishly. Much had King
Henry gathered, gold and silver, but no good did men for his soul
thereof. When the King Stephen came to England, he held his
council at Oxford; where he seized the Bishop Roger of Sarum, and
Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, and the chancellor Roger, his
nephew; and threw all into prison till they gave up their
castles. When the traitors understood that he was a mild man,
and soft, and good, and no justice executed, then did they all
wonder. They had done him homage, and sworn oaths, but they no
truth maintained. They were all forsworn, and forgetful of their
troth; for every rich man built his castles, which they held
against him: and they filled the land full of castles. They
cruelly oppressed the wretched men of the land with castle-works;
and when the castles were made, they filled them with devils and
evil men. Then took they those whom they supposed to have any
goods, both by night and by day, labouring men and women, and
threw them into prison for their gold and silver, and inflicted
on them unutterable tortures; for never were any martyrs so
tortured as they were. Some they hanged up by the feet, and
smoked them with foul smoke; and some by the thumbs, or by the
head, and hung coats of mail on their feet. They tied knotted
strings about their heads, and twisted them till the pain went to
the brains. They put them into dungeons, wherein were adders,
and snakes, and toads; and so destroyed them. Some they placed
in a crucet-house; that is, in a chest that was short and narrow,
and not deep; wherein they put sharp stones, and so thrust the
man therein, that they broke all the limbs. In many of the
castles were things loathsome and grim, called "Sachenteges", of
which two or three men had enough to bear one. It was thus made:
that is, fastened to a beam; and they placed a sharp iron
[collar] about the man's throat and neck, so that he could in no
direction either sit, or lie, or sleep, but bear all that iron.
Many thousands they wore out with hunger. I neither can, nor may
I tell all the wounds and all the pains which they inflicted on
wretched men in this land. This lasted the nineteen winters
while Stephen was king; and it grew continually worse and worse.
They co