The earl of Essex was compelled to surrender the Tower of London, and several of his strong castles, as the price of his freedom;[490] but he was no sooner at liberty, than he collected together his vassals and adherents, and raised the standard of rebellion. He was joined by crowds of freebooters and needy adventurers, and soon found himself at the head of a powerful army. He laid waste the royal domains, pillaged the king's servants, and subsisted his followers upon plunder. He took and sacked the town of Cambridge, laid waste the surrounding country, and stormed several royal castles. He was afterwards compelled to retreat for a brief period into the fens before a superior force led against him by king Stephen in person.
The most frightful excesses are said to have been committed by this potent earl. He sent spies, we are told, to beg from door to door, and discover where rich men dwelt, that he might seize them at night in their beds, throw them into dungeons, and compel the payment of a heavy ransom for their liberty.[491] He got by water to Ramsey, and entering the abbey of St. Benedict at morning's dawn, surprised the monks asleep in their beds after the fatigue of nocturnal offices; he turned them out of their cells, filled the abbey with his soldiers, and made a fort of the church; he took away all the gold and silver vessels of the altar, the copes and vestments of the priests and singers ornamented with precious stones, and all the decorations of the church, and sold them for money to reward his soldiers.[492] The monkish historians of the period speak with horror of these sacrilegious excesses.
"He dared," says William, the monk of Newburgh, who lived in the reign of king Stephen, "to make that celebrated and holy place a robber's cave, and to turn the sanctuary of the Lord into an abode of the devil. He infested all the neighbouring provinces with frequent incursions, and at length, emboldened by constant success, he alarmed and harassed king Stephen himself by his daring attacks. He thus, indeed, raged madly, and it seemed as if the Lord slept and cared no longer for human affairs, or rather his own, that is to say, ecclesiastical affairs, so that the pious labourers in Christ's vineyard exclaimed, 'Arise, O God, maintain thine own cause ... how long shall the adversary do this dishonour, how long shall the enemy blaspheme thy name?' But God, willing to make his power known, as the apostle saith, endured with much 'long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction,' and at last smote his enemies in their hinder parts. It was discovered indeed, a short time before the destruction of this impious man, as we have learned from the true relation of many witnesses, that the walls of the church sweated pure blood,--a terrible manifestation, as it afterwards appeared, of the enormity of the crime, and of the speedy judgement of God upon the sinners."[493]