Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/160

 73, with v. 103–4, and  l. viii. c. 6, who gives the true date). During the year then closing he had quarrelled with the most influential of all the barons, Matilda's half-brother Robert, earl of Gloucester [q. v.]; and in the spring of 1138 Robert sent him a formal defiance, which proved the signal for a rising of the barons in the south and west of England. Geoffrey Talbot had already seized Hereford Castle, which he held against the king in person for nearly five weeks (May–June). While Stephen was in London collecting fresh forces, Talbot was made prisoner by the bishop of Bath, and the bishop was captured in his turn by the garrison of Earl Robert's castle of Bristol, from whom he bought his release by giving Talbot up. At this Stephen was so angry that he marched upon Bath, and was with difficulty restrained from deposing the bishop. He went on to Bristol; but the nature of its site made a siege appear so hopeless that he was persuaded to abandon the idea, and, after a reconnoitring expedition to Castle Cary and Harptree (Somerset), he moved northward to Dudley and Shrewsbury. He ‘smoked out’ the occupants of Shrewsbury Castle by firing some brushwood in the ditch, captured its commandant's uncle and hanged him with (it is said) over ninety comrades, made a truce with the rebel lord of Dudley, and returned to the south to besiege Robert's fortress of Wareham. There he had no success; but early next year (1139) he took another of Robert's castles—Leeds in Kent—while the queen negotiated a treaty with the Scottish king, which Stephen ratified at Nottingham shortly before Easter. Thence Henry of Scotland accompanied him to an unsuccessful siege of Ludlow, where the rebels nearly captured the Scottish prince by means of an iron hook, but he was ‘splendidly rescued’ by the king. At midsummer Stephen summoned the justiciar, Bishop Roger of Salisbury [q. v.], to a meeting at Oxford. Though the new king had showered gifts and favours upon the old minister of his predecessor, they had been from the outset suspicious of each other. Both went to the meeting with a train of armed followers; a fray broke out between the latter, and the king made it an excuse for arresting the justiciar, his son Roger the chancellor, and his nephew Alexander, bishop of Lincoln. He then went to besiege the justiciar's castle of Devizes, dragging the two Rogers with him; the elder he lodged in a cowshed, the younger he threatened to hang if the place were not given up; and the chancellor's mother, who held the keep, was thus terrified into surrender. After securing Bishop Roger's other castles—Sherborne and Malmesbury—Stephen marched against those of the bishop of Lincoln—Newark and Sleaford—and won them by keeping their owner starving at the gates of each in turn till he bade his people yield. For these outrages upon two bishops the king was cited by his brother Henry, now papal legate, to answer before a church council at Winchester on 29 Aug. Stephen's defence was that he had arrested Roger and Alexander as traitors, and that the castles which he had taken from them were not parts of their episcopal baronies, but private possessions, which by canon law they had no right to hold. On this latter point the council decided in his favour; but it compelled him to do public penance for his violence to the persons of the bishops.

Meanwhile, William of Mohun had revolted at Dunster, and Baldwin of Redvers had seized Corfe. Stephen formed a hurried blockade of the former place, and was besieging the latter when he learned that the empress had landed at Arundel. He hastened to blockade her there, till his brother advised him to let her join Earl Robert, whereupon he gave her a safe-conduct and an escort to Bristol. In a few months she was practically mistress of the western shires. Early in 1140 the bishop of Ely raised the standard of revolt in the east; the king attacked his island fortress with equal skill and energy, and drove him out. At Whitsuntide Stephen held his court in London, but in the Tower instead of at Westminster, and only one bishop, a Norman, attended it. Stephen next marched against Hugh Bigod and took his castle of Bungay; in August he had to make another expedition against the same offender, and came to an agreement with him ‘which did not last long’ (Ann. Waverley, an. 1140). He also wrested Cornwall from its earl, who had joined Matilda; but this was only a temporary success. Shortly before Christmas he went into Lincolnshire to meet Earl Randulf of Chester [see or ] and his brother, William of Roumare [q. v.] Scarcely had he returned to London when he learned that they had seized Lincoln Castle. He at once went and laid siege to it; Randulf slipped out alone, to reappear on Candlemas day (1141), not only followed by the men of his own earldom, but accompanied by the whole force of the Angevin party, with the Earl of Gloucester at its head. In the battle that ensued the bulk of Stephen's men ‘betrayed him and fled,’ and he was left with a mere handful of comrades in the midst of a host of enemies. The