Geoffrey meanwhile proved his newly-bought adherence to the King by seizing the Bishop of London in his palace at Fulham, and holding him as a prisoner. A few weeks later, Geoffrey, with a large contingent of a thousand Londoners, fully armed, was assisting at the rout of Winchester.
On the 1st of November the King was exchanged for the Earl of Gloucester. The importance of the event, as it was regarded by the City of London, is curiously proved by the date of a private London deed (Round, G. de M., p. 136): “Anno MCXLI., Id est in exitu regis Stephani de captione Roberti filii regis Henrici.”
At Christmas 1141 the King was crowned a second time, just as, fifty years later, after his captivity, Richard was crowned a second time. Round ascribes Stephen’s second Charter to Geoffrey to the same date. This Charter gave Geoffrey even better terms than he had received from the Empress. He was confirmed as Earl of Essex and as Constable of the Tower: he was made Justiciar and Sheriff of London and Middlesex: and he was confirmed as Justiciar and Sheriff of the counties of Essex and Hertford. The Charter acknowledges that Geoffrey was Constable of the Tower by inheritance.
In a few months, Stephen being dead, and his troops dispersed, Geoffrey went over again to the side of the Empress, and once more was rewarded by a Charter, the full meaning of which will be found in Round. It was the last of his many bargains. Matilda’s cause was lost with the fall of Oxford (December 1142).
It would seem that the first care of Stephen was to conciliate the Church, which had grievous cause for complaint. In the words of the Gesta Stephani: “because there was nothing left anywhere whole and undamaged, they had recourse to the possessions of the monasteries, or the neighbouring municipalities, or any others which they could send forth troops enough to infest. At one time they loaded their victims with false accusations and virulent abuse; at another they ground them down with vexatious claims and extortions; some they stripped of their property, either by open robbery or secret contrivance, and others they reduced to complete subjection in the most shameless manner. If any one of the reverend monks, or of the secular clergy, came to complain of the exactions laid on Church property, he was met with abuse, and abruptly silenced with outrageous threats; the servants who attended him on his journey were often severely scourged before his face, and he himself, whatever his rank and order might be, was shamefully stripped of his effects, and even his garments, and driven away or left helpless, from the severe beating to which he was subjected. These unhappy spectacles, these lamentable tragedies, as they were common throughout England, could not escape the observation of the Bishops.”
A Council was held in London as soon as the King’s cause seemed secure. It was there decreed that “any one who violated a church or churchyard, or laid violent hands on a clerk or other religious person, should be incapable of receiving absolution except from the Pope himself. It was also decreed that ploughs in the fields, and the rustics who worked at them, should be sacred, just as much as if they were in a churchyard. They also excommunicated with lighted candles all who should contravene this decree, and so the rapacity of these human kites was a little checked.” (Roger of Wendover.)
It is significant, however, that in the Gesta Stephani some of the Bishops—“not all of them, but several”—assumed arms, rode on war-horses, received their share of the booty, and imprisoned or tortured soldiers and men of wealth who fell into their hands, wherever they could.
In September 1148, after this Council, Stephen held a Court at St. Albans. Among the nobles who attended was the great earl, Geoffrey de Mandeville, a man, says Henry of Huntingdon, more regarded than the King himself. His enemies, however, calling on the King to remember his past treacheries, easily persuaded him that new treacheries were in contemplation. Perhaps the King understood that here was a subject too powerful, one who, like the Earl of Warwick later, was veritably a king-maker, and was readily convinced that the wisest thing would be to take a strong step and arrest him. This, in fact, he did.
Geoffrey was conveyed to London and confined in his own Tower, whither a message was brought him that he must either surrender all his castles to the King, or be hanged. He chose the former. So far as London is concerned he vanishes at this point. It is not, however, without interest to note that on his release he broke into open revolt. Like Hereward, he betook himself to the fens and the country adjacent. He seized upon Ramsey Abbey; he turned out the monks, and converted the House into a fortified post; he stabled his horses in the cloisters; he gave its manors to his followers; he ravaged the country in all directions. He was joined by large numbers of the mercenaries then in the country. He occupied a formidable position protected by the fens; he held the castle of Ely; he held strong places at Fordham, Benwick, and Wood Walton. He sacked and burned Cambridge and St. Ives, robbing even the churches of their plate and treasures: all the horrors of Stephen’s long civil wars were doubled in the ferocious career of this wild beast; the country was wasted; there was not even a plough left; no man tilled the land; every lord had his castle; every castle was a robber’s nest.
“Some, for whom their country had lost its charms, chose rather to make their home in foreign lands; others drew to the churches for protection, and constructing mean hovels in their precincts, passed their days in fear and trouble. Food being scarce, for there was a dreadful famine throughout England, some of the people disgustingly devoured the flesh of dogs and horses; others appeased their insatiable hunger with the garbage of uncooked herbs and roots; many, in all parts, sunk under the severity of the famine and died in heaps; others with their whole families went sorrowfully into voluntary banishment and disappeared. Then were seen famous cities deserted and depopulated by the death of the inhabitants of every age and sex, and fields white for the harvest, for it was near the season of autumn, but none to gather it, all having been struck down by the famine. Thus the whole aspect of England presented a scene of calamity and sorrow, misery and oppression. It tended to increase the evil, that a crowd of fierce strangers who had flocked to England in bands to take service in the wars, and who were devoid of all bowels of mercy and feelings of humanity, were scattered among the people thus suffering.”—Gesta Stephani.