Of all the great nobles, the one whom both parties were most anxious to win to their own interest was the earl of Chester. His earldom was no empty title, no mushroom creation of the last few years, but a great palatine jurisdiction inherited in regular succession from Hugh of Avranches, on whom it had been conferred by the Conqueror, and comprising the sole government and ownership of the whole of Cheshire. Within its limits the earl ruled supreme; every acre of land, save what belonged to the Church, was held under him; every man owed him suit and service; the king himself had no direct authority within the little realm of Chester, and could claim from its sovereign nothing but the homage due from vassal to overlord. The earl, in fact, as has been often said, “held Chester by the sword as freely as the king held England by the crown;” and as things now stood the earl’s tenure was by far the more secure of the two. The present ruler of this miniature kingdom, Ralf by name, had been married almost in his boyhood to a daughter of Robert of Gloucester.[845] All his father-in-law’s persuasions, however, had as yet failed to draw him to Matilda’s side. Stephen on the other hand was equally alive to the importance of securing Ralf’s adherence, and lavished upon him all the honours he could desire,[846] with one exception. That one was the earldom of Carlisle, which his father had held for a few years and then surrendered in exchange for that of his cousin Richard of Chester, who perished in the White Ship.[847] Ralf accordingly quarrelled for the possession of Carlisle with Henry of Scotland, of whose Cumbrian earldom it now formed a part. Henry appealed to Stephen, who could not but take his side,[848] yet for his own sake was anxious to satisfy Ralf. The mother of Ralf and of his elder half-brother William of Roumare was a great Lincolnshire heiress, daughter of Ivo Taillebois by his marriage with a lady of Old-English race whose family held considerable estates in that county, of which one of them had been sheriff under the Conqueror.[849] In consequence, no doubt, of this old connexion, Stephen at the close of the year 1140 contrived a meeting with the two brothers somewhere in Lincolnshire, and there bestowed great honour upon them both,[850] including, as it seems, a grant of the earldom of Lincoln to William of Roumare.[851] A mere empty title, however, satisfied neither of the brother-earls. Rather, as the English chronicler says of them and of all the rest, “the more he gave them the worse they were to him.”[852] His back was no sooner turned than they planned a trick, which their wives helped them to execute, for gaining possession of Lincoln castle.[853] There Ralf set himself up as lord and master of the city and the neighbourhood;[854] and we can want no more speaking witness to the character of such feudal tyranny as was represented in his person than the fact that not only the citizens, but Stephen’s late victim Bishop Alexander himself, sent the king an urgent appeal to come and deliver them from the intruder.[855]

The news reached Stephen as he was keeping Christmas in London, and the peaceful gathering of the court changed into the muster of an armed host which set off at once for Lincoln, and, actively supported by the citizens and the bishop, sat down to besiege the castle.[856] The present polygonal keep of Lincoln castle appears to have been built by Ralf of Chester in the last years of Stephen’s reign. That which he now occupied stood on the same spot, on the south side of the enclosure, and was the original round shell built by the Conqueror upon a mound of still earlier date. Its base was surrounded by ditches, the outer fortifications on that side being on a lower level, and probably still consisting of nothing more than the old English rampart-mound and palisade; the other three sides of the enclosure, where there was no such steep natural incline, were protected by a curtain-wall raised upon the old mounds, and encircled by ditches wide and deep, but dry, for there was no means of contriving a moat on the top of that limestone crag. The brother-earls were not prepared for Stephen’s prompt and vigorous attack: their force was small, and they had their wives and children to protect. Ralf slipped out alone,[857] made his way to Chester to raise his followers there, and sent a message to his father-in-law offering his allegiance to the Empress if Robert would help the besieged at Lincoln out of their strait.[858] Even had his own daughter not been among them, Earl Robert was not the man to miss such a chance. At the head of the entire force of his party he answered Ralf’s appeal; but so keenly did he feel the importance of the crisis that he kept the real object of his expedition a secret from all but his own nearest friends; and the bulk of his host followed him all the way from Gloucester without any idea whither he was leading them, till they found themselves actually in sight of the foe.[859]

The two earls probably met at Claybrook in Leicestershire. At that point Ralf, coming down from Chester by the Watling Street, and Robert, marching up by a branch road from Gloucester, would both strike into the Foss-Way, and thence would follow its north-eastward course along the eastern side of the Trent valley. Between the road, the river and the promontory of Lincoln stretched a tract of low-lying marshy ground across which the Foss-Dyke ran from the Trent at Torksey into the Witham just above the bridge of Lincoln, thus connecting the two rivers and forming an outlet for the superfluous waters of the Trent, which in rainy seasons was only too apt, as it is even now, to overflow its banks and flood all the surrounding country. Against the storms of the winter of 1140 all precautions had failed; the surging stream had risen far above the level of the dyke, and the greater part of the ground between it and the south-western slope of the Lincoln hill was drowned in one vast sheet of water. The Foss-Way entered the city by a bridge over the Witham; the two earls, however, could not venture to take this route, and made instead for an ancient ford which crossed the river a little farther westward, nearer to its junction with the Foss-Dyke. Stephen was evidently expecting them and had anticipated their course, for he had posted a detachment of troops to guard the site of this ford.[860] All trace of the ford itself, however, was lost in the flood. “Even so would I have it,” cried the earl of Gloucester to his son-in-law, as in the dawn of Candlemas-day they reached the southern margin of the water; “once across, retreat will be impossible; we must conquer or die.” The two leaders plunged in, swam boldly across the fordless stream, and their whole host followed their example.[861] Stephen’s outpost fled or was overcome, and the earls apparently wound their way round the foot of the hill till they reached a tract of comparatively high and dry ground on its south-western side. On the eastern border of this tract, close under shelter of the ridge, a dark moving shadow might tell them that swift and secret as their march had been, Stephen was aware of it and had drawn out all his forces to meet them;[862] while on the height above there loomed out dimly, through the chill grey mist of the February morning, the outlines of the fortress which they had come to deliver.

As they drew up in battle array on the marshy meadows there arose a momentary dispute for precedence. The fiery young earl of Chester pleaded that as the quarrel was his, so the foremost place of danger and of honour should be his likewise. But the quarrel was no longer Ralf’s alone. The flower of the army which had come to aid him consisted of the “Disinherited,” the men whom Stephen had deprived of their lands and honours to bestow them on his own favourites—the men whom Henry had raised up and whom Stephen had cast down[863]—and for them Earl Robert claimed the right of striking the first blow to avenge at once their own wrongs and those of King Henry’s heiress. While his eloquence was winding up their feelings to the highest pitch of excitement,[864] all was astir in the royal camp. There, too, crown and kingdom were felt to be at stake, and many of Stephen’s friends besought him not to risk everything in a pitched battle till he should have gathered a larger force—above all, not on that holy day, for it was Sexagesima Sunday as well as the feast of the Purification.[865] Sinister omens at the early mass—the breaking of the lighted taper in the king’s hand, the falling of the pyx upon the altar[866]—lent additional force to their entreaties; but Stephen was impatient for the crisis and would hear of no delay.[867] He drew up his host in three divisions; two on horseback, commanded respectively by Alan of Richmond and William of Ypres;[868] the third on foot around the royal standard, with the king himself in their midst.[869] In the opposing army the van was taken by the “Disinherited”; the men of Chester, who had first occupied it, now stood in the second line, under the command of their own earl, and on foot.[870] The third line was headed by Robert of Gloucester, and on the wings of the host was a crowd of half-savage Welshmen, drawn from the Welsh dependencies of the earldoms of Gloucester and Chester, and “better furnished with daring than with arms.”[871]

In the midst of a spirited harangue addressed to the royal troops by Baldwin of Clare—for among all Stephen’s popular gifts, that of eloquence was lacking[872]—Earl Robert sounded his trumpets for the attack. The Disinherited charged the first line of the royal cavalry under the earls of Richmond, Meulan, Norfolk, Northampton and Surrey, with such vigour that it was scattered almost in a moment. The second line of Stephen’s cavalry—the Flemings under William of Ypres and the count of Aumale—were attacked in flank by the Welsh, whom they put to flight, but a charge of the men of Chester dispersed them in their turn, and the whole body of horsemen on the king’s side turned tail at once.[873] Even William of Ypres for once forsook his royal friend; and the hasty flight of the other leaders, with Alan of Richmond at their head, shewed how half-hearted was their attachment to the king.[874] Stephen and his foot-soldiers were left alone in the midst of the foe, who closed round them on all sides and set to work to assault them as if besieging a fortress. Again and again the horsemen dashed upon that living wall, each time leaving a ghastly breach, but each time driven back from the central point[875] where the king stood like a lion at bay,[876] cutting down every one who came within reach of his sword. The sword broke; but a citizen of Lincoln who stood at his side replaced it by a yet more terrible weapon—one of those two-handed Danish battle-axes which it seems had not yet gone quite out of use in the Danelaw.[877] Almost all his followers were taken or slain, yet still he fought on, with the rage of a wild beast[878] and the courage of a hero, alone against an army. At last Chester charged with all his forces straight at the king. Down upon his helmet came the axe, and Ralf, on his knees in the mire, learned that he was even yet no match for his deserted and outraged sovereign.[879] Most likely it was that blow, dealt at the traitor with all Stephen’s remaining strength, which broke the axe in his hands.[880] Then a stone, hurled no one knew whence, struck him on the head and he fell.[881] A knight, William of Kahaines, seized him by the helmet, shouting “Hither, hither! I have the king!”[882] Yet even then Stephen shook him off, and it was only to Robert of Gloucester in person that he deigned to surrender at last.[883] Baldwin of Clare and three other faithful ones were captured with him; all the rest of the gallant little band were already taken or slain.[884] The triumphant host marched into Lincoln and sacked the town under the royal captive’s eyes.[885] He was then conveyed to Gloucester and there presented, as a great prize, by Earl Robert to his sister, who straightway sent him to prison in Bristol castle.[886]