Stephen quarrelled with the Chancellor and closed the Court of Exchequer where the barons had paid their dues, and he let the barons build castles and coin their own money. When he was in need of soldiers, he hired foreign ruffians, and because he could not pay them, he let them loose upon the land to plunder: thus he "undid all his cousins had done."
"The barons forswore themselves and broke their troth, for every nobleman made him a castle and held it against the King and filled the land full of castles. They put the wretched country folk to sore toil with their castle-building; and, when the castles were made, they filled them with devils and evil men. Then they took all those that they deemed had any goods, both by night and day, men and women alike, and put them in prison to get their gold and silver, and tortured them with tortures unspeakable. Many thousands they slew with hunger. I cannot nor may not tell all the horrors and all the tortures that they laid on wretched men in the land. And this lasted nineteen winters, while Stephen was King, and ever it was worse and worse.
"They laid taxes on the villages continually, and, when the wretched folk had no more to give them, they robbed and burned all the villages, so that thou mightest easily fare a whole day's journey and shouldst never find a man living in a village nor a land tilled. Then was corn dear, and flesh and cheese, and there was none in the land.
"If two or three men came riding to a village, all the village folk fled before them, deeming them to be robbers. Wheresoever men tilled, the earth bore no corn, for the land was fordone with such deeds, and they said openly that Christ and His Saints slept. Such, and more than we can say, we suffered nineteen winters for our sins." Then Stephen made a treaty with Matilda's son Henry and promised him the crown of England; for Henry was already a great prince, holding more lands than the monarch of France. Moreover, he was valiant in battle, strong in the Council chamber and never weary. The French King said of him, "Henry is now in England, now in Ireland, now in Normandy, he may be rather said to fly than go by horse or boat."
Henry II could ride all night and, if need were, sleep in the saddle. "His legs were bruised and livid with riding." "He was given beyond measure to the pleasures of hunting; and he would start off the first thing in the morning on a fleet horse and now traversing the woodland glades, now plunging into the forest itself, now crossing the ridges of the hills, would in this manner pass day after day in unwearied exertion; and when, in the evening, he reached home, he was rarely seen to sit down whether before or after supper. In spite of all the fatigue he had undergone, he would keep the whole court standing."
This tireless ruler, before he became King, had restored order in England, for he commanded the hired soldiers to be gone immediately, and they went as they had come like a flight of locusts. He destroyed more than a thousand castles, and those that were well built he kept for himself. "All folk loved him, for he did good justice."
He opened the Court of Exchequer, so that the Barons were forced to pay all they owed Stephen for the nineteen years of his reign. He visited all the courts of justice in the land, and no man durst do evil, for none knew where the King might be. He appointed judges to travel round the country and to sit at Westminster and hear complaints, for many had sought the King in vain, so swiftly did he travel from place to place. Thus the barons were made to fear the King and rule justly.
CHAPTER X
NORMAN PRELATES