acity 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.[*]

[* Chron. Sax, p. 238. W. Malms, p. 185. Gest.
Steph. p. 961.]

{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 Glocester 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. {1141.} 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
valor, borne down by numbers and taken prisoner. He was conducted to
Glocester; and though at first treated with humanity, was soon after, on
some suspicion, thrown into prison, and loaded with irons.

Stephen's party was entirely broken by the captivity of their leader,
and the barons came in daily from all quarters, and did homage to
Matilda. The princess, however, amidst all her prosperity, knew that she
was not secure of success, unless she could gain the confidence of
the clergy; and as the conduct of the legate had been of late very
ambiguous, and showed his intentions to have rather aimed at humbling
his brother, than totally ruining him, she employed every endeavor to
fix him in her interests. She held a conference with him in an open
plain near Winchester; where she promised upon oath, that if he would
acknowledge her for sovereign, would recognize her title as the sole
descendant of the late king, and would again submit to the allegiance
which he, as well as the rest o