While, then, they were looking for the coming of the Scots, the scouts, whom they had sent in advance, returned, reporting that the king had already crossed the river Tees with his army, and after his custom was now devastating their district. So they went to meet him with the utmost haste, and passing through the town of Northallerton, reached at break of day a field two miles distant therefrom. Forthwith some of them set up the mast of a ship in the middle of a scaffold which they had brought, and called it the Standard.... On the top thereof they hung a silver box containing the body of Christ, and the banners of St. Peter the Apostle, and St. John of Beverley and St. Wilfred of Ripon, confessors and bishops. This they did that Jesus Christ our Lord, by the presence of His body, might be their leader in the war which they had undertaken for the defence of His church and their country, at the same time providing hereby that, if any of them should be by chance separated from their fellows and scattered, they would have a sure signal by which to return to them and there find assistance. They had hardly equipped themselves with arms for the fight, when the king of Scotland was reported to be at hand with the whole of his army ready and arrayed for battle. Therefore a great part of the knights left their horses and became footmen, and the choicest of them were arrayed with archers and set in the front rank, the rest, except the ordainers and directors of the battle, being packed about the Standard in the centre of the position, while the remainder of the troops were massed around them on every side in a dense rampart. The band of horsemen and the horses of the knights were withdrawn a little farther, that they might not take fright at the noise and clamour of the Scots. In like manner among the enemy the king himself and almost all his men became footmen and their horses were kept farther back. In the forefront of the battle were the Picts, in the middle the king with his knights and Englishmen; and the rest of the barbarous horde pressed around on all sides. While they marched to battle in such order, the Standard with its banners was seen not far away, and at once the hearts of the king and his followers were struck with a mighty fear and terror. But hardened in their malice, they yet strove to fulfil the evil work begun by them. So on the octave of the Assumption of St. Mary, 22 August, between the first and third hours, the strife of this battle began and ended. For straightway at the first onset innumerable Picts were slain, and the rest threw down their arms and basely took to flight. The field was choked with corpses, large numbers were captured, and the king and all the residue fled. Of that great army, all were either killed or captured or scattered like sheep whose shepherd is smitten down, and in wonderful wise, as if deprived of their sense, they fled as much away from their own land into the neighbouring parts of their enemies’ country, as towards their native land. But wherever they were found, they were killed like sheep for slaughter; and so by the righteous judgment of God, those who had woefully slain and left the dead unburied were themselves more woefully cut to pieces, and found no burial after the fashion of their own or the foreigners’ land, but were exposed to dogs, birds and wild beasts, or torn and dismembered, or left to decay and putrefy under the open sky. The king also, who a short time before in his excessive pride of heart and in the magnitude of his army seemed to have raised his head among the stars of heaven, and therefore threatened to destroy utterly the whole or the greatest part of England, was now shorn of his glory, and accompanied by but a few, and covered with the utmost shame and disgrace, scarcely escaped alive.
The degree of the divine vengeance appeared most clearly in the fact that the army of the vanquished was beyond estimation larger than that of the conquerors; nor could the number of the slain be counted by any man. For, as many bear witness, of the army which left Scotland alone, more than ten thousand are reckoned to have been missing from the ranks of those who returned, for throughout divers parts of Deira, Bernicia, Northumberland, Cumberland and other districts, many more were cut off after the battle than were slain in the battle. The English army, on the other hand, lost few of its numbers, speedily gaining a victory by God’s aid; and dividing the booty which was found there in great quantities, in a short while almost wholly broke up, and every man returned to his own home, restoring to the churches with joy and thanksgiving the banners of the saints which they had received. Verily they had marched to this battle in their finest array and all their wealth, as it had been to a royal marriage feast.
KING STEPHEN’S ATTACK ON THE BISHOPS (1139).
Source.—William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, ed. Stubbs, vol. ii., pp. 547–555. (Rolls Series.)
In the year 1139 after the Incarnation of our Lord, the venom of malice, which king Stephen’s heart had long been fostering, at length burst forth openly. Rumours were spreading about England that earl Robert was on the eve of coming from Normandy with his sister;[37] and in expectation thereof many were disaffected towards the king, not only in will but in deed, whereupon he repaired his losses by wronging others. Many were seized at court against the king’s honour, on mere suspicion of supporting the opposite party, and forced to surrender their castles and submit to whatsoever conditions he chose. There were at that time in England two exceeding powerful bishops, Roger of Salisbury, and his brother’s son, Alexander of Lincoln. Alexander had built the castle of Newark, for the defence and honour of the bishopric, as he said. Roger, who wished to display magnificence in the building of castles, had erected more imposing fortifications at Sherborne and Devizes, covering a large area of ground with his buildings. He had begun a castle at Malmesbury in the churchyard itself, hardly a stone’s throw from the principal church. The castle of Salisbury, though it was the king’s own property, had passed into his keeping by grant of king Henry, and had been surrounded with a wall. Some of the powerful laity, stirred to envy that they should be surpassed by clerks in their wealth of heaped-up treasure and the size of their towns, cherished in their hearts a sullen jealousy. So they poured their discontents into the king’s ear, urging that it would all unquestionably turn to the king’s destruction, since, as soon as the empress came, they would welcome their lady by surrendering their castles, drawn to her by the memory of her father’s favours; they must therefore be at once forestalled and constrained to yield up their fortresses.... The king, though too favourably inclined to these advisers, for some time pretended not to listen to their attractive proposals, easing the bitterness of postponement either by his regard for the holy office of the bishops, or, as I incline to think, by his fear of the odium involved. In the end he only put off the execution of the policy thus urged upon him until the first favourable opportunity. That arose in the following manner.
A council of the nobility was held at Oxford on 24 June, which the prelates aforesaid attended. The bishop of Salisbury was most unwilling to go. I heard him say: “By my Lady St. Mary, I know not why, but I have no liking for this journey. This I know, that I shall be of as much use in the court as a foal in a battle.” For so his heart foreboded ills to come. Fortune, as it turned out, seemed to favour the king’s desires; a riot arose between the men of the bishops and the men of Alan, count of Brittany, over a claim to quarters; the end was melancholy, for the men of the bishop of Salisbury, who were then sitting at table, left their meal unfinished and jumped up to fight. The affair was settled with curses first and swords afterwards. The retainers of Alan were driven off, his nephew barely escaping alive, while the bishops’ party did not secure a bloodless victory, many being wounded and one knight killed. The king seized the opportunity and ordered the original instigators to summon the bishops to satisfy his court for their retainers’ breach of the king’s peace; the satisfaction demanded was the delivery of the keys of their castles as pledges of their good faith. They were ready to give satisfaction, but hesitated to surrender the castles, whereupon he commanded that they should be closely confined, to prevent their departure. So he took them to Devizes, bishop Roger unbound, but the chancellor, his nephew (or more than his nephew), in fetters; his object was to take the castle, which had been built at a great and almost incalculable cost, not for the glory of the church, as the prelate himself alleged, but, in sober truth, to its detriment. Upon investment, the castles of Salisbury, Sherborne and Malmesbury were surrendered to the king; Devizes itself was given up after three days, bishop Roger voluntarily imposing abstinence upon himself, that by his personal suffering he might induce the bishop of Ely, who held the castle, to yield.[38] Alexander, the bishop of Lincoln, gave way also without more ado, purchasing his delivery by the surrender of the castles of Newark and Sleaford.
This action of the king was widely discussed from opposite standpoints. Some said that the bishops were rightly dispossessed of their castles, because they had defied the canons in erecting them; they ought to be preachers of the gospel of peace, not builders of houses that might harbour the authors of evil. This view was urged and further amplified by the arguments of Hugh, archbishop of Rouen, who stoutly championed the king with all his eloquence. Others said the contrary, and this party had the support of Henry, bishop of Winchester, legate in England of the apostolic see, brother of king Stephen.... “If bishops,” he said, “in any wise forsake the way of justice, the canons, not the king, must be their judge; they ought to have been deprived of no possession without a public ecclesiastical council; the king had acted not from zeal for righteousness, but for his own private benefit, since he had not given the castles back to the churches, at whose charges and on whose lands they had been built, but had delivered them to laymen, and those by no means favourable to religion.” He urged these considerations in the king’s presence both privately and publicly, pressing him to deliver and make restitution to the prelates, but his labour was wasted, his plea ignored. Wherefore, determined to exert the force of the canons, he summoned his brother instantly to appear before the council which was to be holden on 29 August at Winchester.
On the appointed day almost all the bishops of England, with Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury ... came to Winchester.... The bull of Pope Innocent was first read in the council, whereby from March 1, if I remember rightly, he had delegated part of his charge to the lord bishop of Winchester as his legate in England.... Next followed in the council the legate’s address in Latin, prepared for the learned, touching the disgraceful seizure of the bishops, of whom the bishop of Salisbury had been taken in the chamber of the court, and the bishop of Lincoln in his lodging, while the bishop of Ely, fearing a like fate, had escaped disaster by a hasty flight to Devizes; it was a scandalous crime that the king should have been so led astray, at the instigation of others, as to order violent hands to be laid on his men, especially bishops, in the peace of his court. To the king’s dishonour was added an offence against Heaven, to wit, that under the cloak of the bishops’ guilt, churches were robbed of their possessions. He was so indignant at the king’s outrage against God’s law, that he would rather himself suffer great inconvenience to his person and his possessions than that the episcopal dignity should be so basely humiliated. He had many times warned the king to make amends for his sin; and at last the king had consented to the summoning of a council. The archbishop and the rest should take counsel together as to necessary action; he would not fail in the execution of their advice either out of love for the king, his own brother, or out of fear of losing his possessions, or even of risking his life.
While he was gradually enlarging upon this theme, the king, confident in his own cause, sent earls to the council to ask why he had been summoned.... They were accompanied by one Aubrey de Vere, a man well versed in all kinds of legal causes.... The sum of his charges was as follows: bishop Roger had committed many offences against king Stephen; he had scarcely ever been to the court without riots being stirred up by his men, presuming on his power; as often at other times, so lately at Oxford they had assaulted the men and even the nephew of count Alan.... The bishop of Lincoln had instigated his men to riot, out of his old hatred against count Alan. The bishop of Salisbury secretly supported the king’s enemies and only disguised his treachery for the moment; the king had many unquestionable proofs of it, the chief being that he refused a single night’s lodging to Roger de Mortemer and the king’s knights led by him, when they were in mortal terror of the Bristol rebels. Everybody was saying that as soon as the Empress should have come, he would attach himself to her with his nephews and his castles. Therefore Roger was seized not as a bishop, but as the king’s servant, who had at once administered his affairs and received his wages. The king had not taken the castles by force, but both the bishops had voluntarily surrendered them to escape the accusation of the rioting which they had incited in the court. The king had found in the castles a small sum of money which was lawfully his, for bishop Roger had collected it in the time of king Henry, the king’s uncle and predecessor, from the rents due at the royal Exchequer. The bishop had willingly yielded up both money and castles, for fear of his offences against the king, and the king had no lack of witnesses thereto. For his part, the king was willing that his agreement with the bishops should remain unimpaired.