1134 Duke Robert, having been imprisoned and blinded twenty-eight years, ended his miserable existence. Wheat sufficient to subsist 100 men one day, sold at one shilling—a sheep 4d.
1136 The distance from Aldgate to St. Paul’s (included), destroyed by fire in London.
1136 The Empress Maud besieged in Oxford, and made her escape from thence on foot, being disguised in white, on a snowy night, to Abingdon. The tax of Danegelt entirely abolished. No less than fifteen hundred strong castles in the kingdom.
1139 The Empress Matilda lands at Arundel, and claims the crown. Makes her natural brother, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, her general.
1141 Stephen taken prisoner at the battle of Lincoln, and confined in chains by Maud, in Gloucester gaol. Stephen released.
1148 A new Crusade undertaken.
1151 Gratian of Bologna, the monk, collects the canon laws after twenty-four year’s labour.
1153 Agreed, between Henry and Stephen, that eleven hundred of the castles, erected by permission of the latter, should be abolished. Appeals were first made to the Pope, and canon laws instituted. There was no regular mode of taxation. Contending parties supported themselves by plundering each other’s tenants. There were more abbeys built, than in the hundred years preceding.
1155 The castles demolished, agreeably to the treaty of 1153.
1157 The Welsh, subdued, do homage, and swear allegiance. A sect, called Publicans, rejecting baptism and marriage, came into England from Germany. The bishops pronounced them heretics; they were branded in the forehead and whipped.