WALES AND THE WELSH (1136).
Source.—Gesta Stephani, ed. Howlett, vol. iii., p. 10. (Rolls Series, Chronicles of Stephen, Henry II., and Richard I.)
Wales is a land of woods and pastures, adjoining England on its nearest borders, and jutting into the sea on the other side throughout its whole extent. It abounds in stags and fish, and cows and oxen. The men it rears are savage, swift of foot by nature, fighters by habit, and untrustworthy and unsettled alike. When the Normans had conquered England in battle, they established their sovereignty over this land also with numberless castles. They crushed the natives with spirit, and civilised them with patience; to ensure peace they imposed upon them law and ordinances, and brought the land to such fertility and abundant plenty, that you would deem it in no wise inferior to the most fruitful part of Britain. But on the death of king Henry, when the peace and concord of the realm were buried with him, the Welsh, who always cherished mortal hatred of their lords, wholly cast off the yoke to which their treaties bound them, and issuing in bands from divers places, made hostile inroads now here, now there, and with plunder, fire and sword, wasted towns, burned houses, and slaughtered men. They first attacked the district of Gower on the seacoast, a beautiful and abundantly fertile spot, and surrounded and entirely put to the sword a band of knights and footmen massed against them to the number of 516. Thereafter, exulting in the successful issue of their first uprising, they boldly overran all the marches of Wales, bent on every crime and ready for any mischief, neither sparing age nor reverencing rank, and suffering no time or place to check their violence. Rumours of this rebellion reached the ears of the king, who, to curb their unbridled audacity, sent a force of knights and archers, hired at a great cost of treasure, to crush them. Some, however, after many glorious exploits, were slain there, while the rest, unable to endure the savage onslaughts of the enemy, after much toil and expense, retreated with dishonour.
THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARD (1138).
Source.—Richard of Hexham, De gestis regis Stephani, ed. Hewlett, vol. iii., p. 159. (Rolls Series, Chronicles of Stephen, Henry II., and Richard I.)
The king (of Scotland) passing by Durham with his army wasted the crops as far as the river Tees, and after his custom broke into, plundered and burned the towns and churches which he had earlier left untouched; and crossing the Tees also, he began to work the same havoc. But the pity of God, stirred by the tears of innumerable widows, orphans and wretched men, suffered him no longer to practise impiety so great without punishment. The preparations of him and his men for such wickedness, all his stores, and what he intended to do and whither to go, did not escape the men of Yorkshire. So the barons of that county, to wit, archbishop Thurstan, who, as will appear later, was a prime mover in this business, and William de Aumâle, Walter de Ghent, Robert de Bruce, Roger de Mowbray, Walter Spec, Ilbert de Lacy, William de Percy, Richard de Courcy, William Fossard, Robert de Stutevill, and the other mighty and learned men, assembled at York and discussed eagerly among themselves what plan to adopt in this crisis. And since many hesitated, suspecting the treason of others and mutually distrustful, and since they had no commander and leader in war, for king Stephen their lord was overwhelmed at that season with equal difficulties in the south of England and could not come to them at present, and since they feared to oppose their slight forces to numbers so superior, it seemed as if they would altogether abandon the attempt to defend themselves and their country; but Thurstan, their archbishop, a man of great persistence and worth, encouraged them with his speech and counsel. For he was the pastor of their souls, and unlike the hireling, regarded not his own safety by flight from the ravaging wolf, but rather was torn by the keenest compassionate grief at the scattering and undoing of his flock and the destruction of his country, and left no step untried, no stone unturned, to find a remedy for such monstrous evils. Wherefore, both by the divine authority entrusted to him and by the royal power then committed to him in this matter, and by their fealty and honour, he faithfully admonished them not to allow themselves through cowardice to be overthrown in a single day by the worst sort of barbarism.... He also promised them that he would cause the priests of his diocese to march together with them to battle, with their crosses and their parishioners, and purposed himself, God willing, to be present at the fight. At the same troubled season Bernard de Balliol, one of the chief men of that district, came to them from the king with a large body of knights, and both on the king’s and his own behalf inflamed their hearts to the same purpose. Urged therefore by the commands both of their king and of their archbishop, they were all with one accord confirmed in one same purpose, and each returned to his home. Soon after they all reassembled at York with their munitions and arms ready for war. So when they had done penance privately, the archbishop enjoined on them a three-days’ fast with alms, and thereafter solemnly gave them absolution and God’s and his own blessing, and though by reason of great infirmity and the weakness of old age he was carried in a litter wherever he was needed, yet to arouse their courage he determined to go with them. But they forced him to remain, beseeching him to be content to intercede for them by prayer and alms, watching and fasting and by other godly works; they would gladly fight the enemy for God’s church and for His minister, as He should deign to help them, and as their order demanded. Thereupon he delivered to them his cross and the banner of St. Peter and his own men; and they went to the town of Thirsk. Thence they sent Robert de Brus and Bernard de Balliol to the king of Scotland, who was now wasting the land of St. Cuthbert, as was said above; they begged him, with the greatest deference and friendliness, to desist thenceforth from his cruel measures, and promise faithfully to ask the king of England to confer on Henry, son of the king of Scotland, the county of Northumberland, which that king had demanded. But he and his men hardened their hearts, rejected their overtures, and treated them with scornful contempt. So Robert abjured the homage he had done to him, and Bernard the fealty which he had once sworn, when captured by him, and both returned to their fellows. Thereupon all the chief men of that county, and William Peverel and Geoffrey Halsalin from Nottinghamshire, and Robert de Ferers from Derbyshire, and other weighty and wise men, bound and fortified themselves in turn with oaths, that none of them would desert the others in this business, so long as they could each render mutual aid, and so all would either die or conquer together. At the same time the archbishop sent to them Ralph Novellus, bishop of Orkney, with one of his own archdeacons and other clerks, who in his stead should enjoin penance and give absolution to the bands of people daily flocking thither from all quarters. He also sent to them the priests with their parishioners, as he had promised them.