A History of England, Period I. Mediæval Monarchy - J. Franck Bright

Quotations from chroniclers. The miseries of this reign.

Two short extracts from chroniclers give a more complete view of the misery which attended this lawless period than any fresh description could do. William of Newbury says: “Wounded and drained of blood by civil misery, England lay plague-stricken. It is written of an ancient people, ‘In those days there was no king in Israel, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes;’ but in England, under King Stephen, the case was worse. For, because at that time the King was powerless, and the law languished because the King was powerless, though some indeed did what seemed right in their own eyes, many because all fear of King and law was taken off them, did all the more greedily what by their natural instincts they knew to be wrong.... Neither King nor Empress was able to act in a masterful way, or show vigorous discipline. But each kept their own followers in good temper by refusing them nothing lest they should desert them.... And because they were worn out by daily strife, and acted less vigorously, local disturbances of hostile lords grew the more vehement. Castles too rose in great numbers in the several districts, and there were in England, so to speak, as many kings, or rather tyrants, as lords of castles. Individuals took the right of coining their private money, and of private jurisdiction.” We have here the effects of the loosened hold of the crown,—castles, private war, private coinage, private justice. The Saxon Chronicle supplies us with a picture of the effect of these feudal usurpations upon the lower ranks of the people:—

“When the traitors perceived that Stephen was a mild man, and soft and good, and did no justice, then did they all wonder. They had done homage to him and sworn oaths, but held no faith; for every powerful man made his castles and held them against him, and they filled the land full of castles. They cruelly oppressed the wretched men of the land with castle works. When the castles were made, they filled them with devils and evil men. Then they took those men that they imagined had any property, both by night and by day, peasant men and women, and put them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them with unutterable torture; for never were martyrs so tortured as they were. They hanged them up by the feet and smoked them with foul smoke; they hanged them up by the thumbs or by the head, and hung fires on their feet; they put knotted strings about their heads, and writhed them so that it went to the brain. They put them in dungeons, in which were adders, and snakes, and toads, and killed them so. Some they put in a ‘cruset hûs,’ that is in a chest that was short and narrow and shallow, and put sharp stones therein, and pressed the man therein, so that they brake all his limbs. In many of the castles were instruments called a ‘lāŏ (loathly) and grim;’ these were neck-bonds, of which two or three men had enough to bear one. It was so made, that is, it was fastened to a beam, and they put a sharp iron about the man’s throat and his neck, so that he could not in any direction sit, or lie, or sleep, but must bear all that iron. Many thousands they killed with hunger; I neither can nor may tell all the wounds or all the tortures which they inflicted on wretched men in this land; and that lasted the nineteen winters while Stephen was King; and ever it was worse and worse. They laid imposts on the towns continually; and when the wretched men had no more to give, they robbed and burned all the towns, so that thou mightest well go all a day’s journey, and thou shouldest never find a man sitting in a town, or the land tilled. Then was corn dear, and flesh and cheese and butter; for there was none in the land. Wretched men died of hunger; some went seeking alms who at one while were rich men; some fled out of the land. Never yet had more wretchedness been in the land, nor did heathen men ever do worse than they did; for everywhere at times they forbore neither church nor churchyard, but took all the property that was therein, and then burned the church and altogether. Nor forbore they a bishop’s land, nor an abbot’s, nor a priest’s, but robbed monks and clerks, and every man another who anywhere could. If two or three men came riding to a town, all the township fled before them, imagining them to be robbers. The bishops and clergy constantly cursed them, but nothing came of it, for they were all accursed, and forsworn, and lost. However a man tilled, the earth bare no corn; for the land was all foredone by such deeds, and they said openly that Christ and His saints slept. Such, and more than we can say, we endured nineteen winters for our sins.”

A people who had suffered these things must certainly have sighed for a strong government, by whatever hand it should be wielded; and miserable though the reign had been, it tended towards the consolidation of nationality.

[HENRY II.]
1154–1189.

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[HENRY II.]1154–1189.

[HENRY II.]
1154–1189.