Were we to relate all the military events transmitted to us by contemporary and authentic historians, it would be easy to swell our accounts of this reign into a large volume: but those incidents, so little memorable in themselves, and so confused both in time and place, could afford neither instruction nor entertainment to the reader. It suffices to say, that the war was spread into every quarter, and that those turbulent barons, who had already shaken off, in a great measure, the restraint of government, having now obtained the pretence of a public cause, carried on their devastations with redoubled fury, exercised implacable vengeance on each other, and set no bounds to their oppressions over the people. The castles of the nobility were become receptacles of licensed robbers; who, sallying forth day and night, committed spoil on the open country, on the villages, and even on the cities, put the captives to torture, in order to make them reveal their treasures; sold their persons to slavery; and set fire to their houses, after they had pillaged them of every thing valuable. The fierceness of their disposition, leading them to commit wanton destruction, frustrated their rapacity of its purpose; and the property and persons even of the ecclesiastics, generally so much revered, were at last, from necessity, exposed to the same outrage which had laid waste the rest of the kingdom. The land was left untilled; the instruments of husbandry were destroyed or abandoned; and a grievous famine, the natural result of those disorders, affected equally both parties, and reduced the spoilers as well as the defenceless people to the most extreme want and indigence [z]. [FN [z] Chron. Sax. p. 238. W. Malmes. p. 185. Gest. Steph p. 961.]
[MN 1140.] After several fruitless negotiations and treaties of peace, which never interrupted these destructive hostilities, there happened at last an event, which seemed to promise some end of the public calamities. Ralph, Earl of Chester, and his half-brother, William de Roumara, partisans of Matilda, had surprised the castle of Lincoln; but the citizens, who were better affected to Stephen, having invited him to their aid, that prince laid close siege to the castle, in hopes of soon rendering himself master of the place, either by assault or by famine. The Earl of Gloucester hastened with an army to the relief of his friends; and Stephen, informed of his approach, took the field with a resolution of giving him battle. [MN 1141. 2d Feb.] After a violent shock, the two wings of the royalists were put to flight; and Stephen himself, surrounded by the enemy, was at last, after exerting great efforts of valour, borne down by numbers, and taken prisoner. [MN Stephen taken prisoner.] He was conducted to Gloucester; and though at first treated with humanity was soon after, on some suspicion, thrown into prison and loaded with irons.