Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/83

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him the last of the elder succession of Northumbrian earls, his nephew Robert of Mowbray, tall of stature, swarthy of countenance, fierce, bold, and proud, who looked down on his peers and scorned to obey his betters, who loved better to think than to speak, and who, when he opened his lips, seldom let a smile soften his stern words. With these leaders were joined a crowd of others, "mickle folk, all Frenchmen," as the Chronicler significantly marks. The sons of the soil, we are to believe, had no part in the counsels of that traitorous Lent, in the deeds of that wasting Easter.

The war now began, a war in which, after the example of the chief combatants, fathers fought against sons, brothers against brothers, friends against their former friends. The rebel leaders, each from the point where his main strength lay, began to lay waste the land, specially the lordships of the King and the Archbishop. And among these evil-doers the loyal monk of Peterborough distinctly sets down William of Saint-Calais, meek victim as he seems in the records of his own house. The Bishop may have argued that he was only returning what the King had done to him; but the witness is such as cannot be got over; "The Bishop of Durham did to harm all that he might over all the


 * [Footnote: ad bellandum quam revestitos clericos ad psallendum magis erudire noverat."]