Then Robert of Gloucester felt that the case was hopeless, and that, cost what it might, he must get his sister out. Suddenly, as he was marshalling his host to cut their way through at all risks,[923] on the evening of September 13, the city gates were opened, and peace was proclaimed in the bishop’s name.[924] Robert hereupon decided to march quietly out next morning. He took, however, the precaution of sending his sister out first of all, while he brought up the rear with a small band of men as dauntless as himself.[925] He did wisely. Matilda had but just ridden through the west gate when the bishop, doubtless from his tower at Wolvesey, gave the signal for attack. The whole host of the queen’s partizans rushed upon those of the Lady and routed them completely. Earl Robert succeeded in covering his sister’s retreat, and cut his own way out in another direction, but was overtaken at Stockbridge by William of Ypres and his Flemings, who surrounded and took him prisoner.[926] Miles of Gloucester (whom the Empress had made earl of Hereford), surrounded in like manner, threw down his arms and fled for his life, reaching Gloucester in disgrace, weary, alone, and almost naked.[927] King David, it is said, was thrice made prisoner, but each time bribed his captors to let him go,[928] and was hidden in safety at last by a certain David Holcfard, who happened to be his godson.[929] The archbishop of Canterbury and several other bishops who had accompanied the Empress were despoiled of their horses and even of their clothes. The Lady herself had escaped in company with the Breton lord of Wallingford, Brian Fitz-Count, who had long been her devoted friend and who never forsook her.[930] Their first halt was at Luggershall; urged by her friends, still in terror of pursuit, she mounted another horse and spurred on to Devizes; there, half dead with fatigue, she laid herself on a bier, and bound to it with ropes as if she had been a corpse, she was carried at last safe into Gloucester.

Earl Robert was brought back to Winchester to the feet of the queen, who sent him, under his captor’s charge, into honourable confinement in Rochester castle.[931] The next six weeks were spent in negotiations for his release and that of Stephen; for the party of the Empress found themselves helpless without Robert, and the chief aim of Matilda of Boulogne was to get her husband free. She proposed to Countess Mabel of Gloucester—for the Empress held sullenly aloof—that the two illustrious captives should simply be exchanged, and to this Mabel eagerly assented. Robert, however, protested that an earl was no equivalent for a king, and insisted that all those who had been captured with him should be thrown in to balance the crown. To this their various captors naturally demurred, and the project failed.[932] It was next proposed to settle the whole dispute by restoring Stephen to his throne and making Robert governor of England in his name;[933] but the earl would agree to nothing without his sister’s consent, and the Empress refused to modify her claims in any way.[934] The queen threatened that if Robert did not yield, she would send him over to Boulogne and keep him there in chains for the rest of his life; but he knew that if a hair of his head was touched his countess, whom he had left in command at Bristol, would at once ship off her royal captive to Ireland, and the threat produced no effect. Meanwhile the party of the Empress was falling to pieces so rapidly that her few genuine adherents grew alarmed for her personal safety, and besought Robert to accept freedom on any terms, as the sole chance of averting her ruin. The original proposition of a simple exchange was therefore revived, and accepted in the first days of November.[935]

The earl rejoined his sister at Oxford;[936] the king re-entered his capital amid general rejoicings.[937] His misfortunes, the heroism of his queen, the overbearing conduct of the Empress, all helped to turn the tide of popular feeling in his favour once more. Early in December the legate, with such daring indifference to the awkwardness of his own position as can surely have been due to nothing but conscious integrity of purpose, called a council at Westminster and formally undid the work which he had done at Winchester in the spring. After a solemn complaint had been lodged by Stephen against the vassals who had betrayed and captured him—the counterpart of the charge once made in a similar assembly against Stephen himself, of having been false to his duty as king—Henry rose and made his apology. He had acquiesced in the rule of the Empress, believing it a necessary evil; the evil had proved intolerable, and he was thankful to be delivered from its necessity. In the name of Heaven and its Roman representative he therefore once more proclaimed his brother as the lawfully-elected and apostolically-anointed sovereign to whom obedience was due, and denounced as excommunicate all who upheld the claims of the Angevin countess. The clergy sat in puzzled silence; but their very silence gave consent.[938]

Throughout the winter both parties remained quiet, Stephen in London, Matilda in Oxford; both, in the present exhausted state of their forces, had enough to do in simply standing their ground, without risking any attack upon each other. In the spring Matilda removed to Devizes; there, at Mid-Lent, she held with her partizans a secret council which resulted in an embassy to Anjou, calling upon Geoffrey to come and help in regaining the English heritage of his wife and son. At Pentecost the answer came. Geoffrey, before he would accede to the summons, required to be certified of its reasonableness, and he would accept no assurance save that of the earl of Gloucester in person. Robert, knowing how closely his sister’s interest and even her personal safety was bound up with his presence at her side, was very unwilling to undertake the mission. A scheme was however contrived to satisfy him. Matilda returned to her old quarters at Oxford; the chief men of her party bound themselves by oath to keep within a certain distance of the city, and to guard her against all danger until her brother’s return. On this understanding he sailed from Wareham shortly before Midsummer. He was but just gone when Stephen, who since Easter had been lying sick at Northampton, swooped down upon Wareham so suddenly that the garrison, taken by surprise, yielded to him at once.[939] The king marched up to Cirencester, surprised and destroyed a castle lately built there by the Empress,[940] and thence turned westward to try conclusions with Matilda herself by attacking her headquarters at Oxford.

Oxford was, from its geographical situation, one of the most important strategical posts in England. It stood at the very centre and crowning-point of the valley of the Thames, the great high-way which led from the eastern sea and the capital into the western shires, through the very heart of the land. So long as it remained loyal to Stephen, he was master of the whole Thames valley, and the Angevins, however complete might be their triumph in the west, were cut off from all direct communication with eastern England and even with the capital itself. The surrender of Oxford castle to Matilda in the summer of 1141 had reversed this position of affairs. It probably helped to determine—it was at any rate soon followed by—the surrender of London; and even when London was again lost to the Empress, her possession of Oxford still gave her command over the upper part of the river-valley and thus secured her main line of communication with her brother’s territories in the west, while Stephen in his turn was almost prisoned in the eastern half of his realm. For nearly eleven months he had seen her defying him from her father’s palace of Beaumont or from the impregnable stronghold of the castle, where the first Robert of Oilly, not content with raising a shell-keep on the old English mound, had built another tall square tower which still stands, on the western side of the enclosure, directly above the river.[941] Not until her brother had left her did the king venture to take up the challenge which her very presence there implied; then indeed he felt that the hour had come. Matilda, as if in expectation of his attack, had been employing her followers on the construction of a chain of forts intended to protect and keep open her communications with the west.[942] One by one Stephen broke the links of the chain—Cirencester, Bampton, Ratcot[943]—and from this last place, a little village in the midst of a marsh, half-way between Bampton and Farringdon, he led his host across the Isis and round by the meadows on its southern shore to the ford below S. Frideswide’s from which the city took its name. Matilda’s partizans no sooner discovered his approach—three days before Michaelmas[944]—than they streamed down to the bank of the river, across which they greeted him first with a torrent of abuse and then with a flight of arrows. The vanguard of the royal host, with Stephen himself at their head, sprang into the water, swam rather than waded across the well-known and time-honoured ford,[945] and by the fury of their onset drove their insulting enemies back to the city gates. The rest of the army quickly followed; Matilda’s adherents fled through the open gate, their pursuers rushed in after them, entered the town without difficulty, set it on fire, captured and slew all on whom they could lay their hands, and drove the rest to take shelter in the castle with their Lady.[946]