There was no help to be looked for from the king. All through that summer the whole south and west of England had been in a blaze of revolt which was still unsubdued, and Stephen had neither time, thought, nor troops to spare for the defence of the north. But in face of such a danger as this the men of the north needed no help from him. When their own hearths and altars were threatened by the hereditary Scottish foe, resistance was a matter not of loyalty but of patriotism. The barons and great men of the shire at once organized their plans under the guidance of Archbishop Thurstan, whose lightest word carried more weight in Yorkshire than anything that Stephen could have said or done. Inspired by him, the forces of the diocese met at York in the temper of crusaders. Three days of fasting, almsgiving and penance, concluding with a solemn absolution and benediction from their primate, prepared them for their task. Worn out as he was with years and labours—so feeble that he could neither walk nor ride—Thurstan would yet have gone forth in his litter at the head of his men to encourage the host with his presence and his eloquence; but the barons shrank from such a risk. To them he was the Moses on whose uplifted hands depended their success in the coming battle; so they sent him back to wrestle in prayer for them within his own cathedral church, while they went forth to their earthly warfare against the Scot.[723]

Early in the morning of Tuesday, August 22, the English forces drew up in battle array upon Cowton Moor, two miles from Northallerton. In their midst was the “Standard” from which the fight afterwards took its name:—a cart into which was fixed a pole surmounted by a silver pyx containing the Host, and hung round with the consecrated banners of the local churches, S. Peter of York, S. John of Beverley, S. Wilfrid of Ripon.[724] Thurstan’s place as chief spiritual adviser of the army was filled by Ralf, bishop of the Orkneys;[725] their chief military adviser was Walter Lespec, the pious and noble founder of Kirkham and Rievaux—the very type and model of a Christian knight of the time. Standing upon the cart, with the sacred banners waving round his head, in a voice like a trumpet he addressed his comrades.[726] He appealed to the barons to prove themselves worthy of their race; he appealed to the English shire-levies to prove themselves worthy of their country; he pictured in glowing colours the wrongs which they all had to avenge, and the worse they would have to suffer if they survived a defeat; then, grasping the hand of William of Aumale, the new-made earl of York,[727] he swore aloud to conquer or die.[728] The unanimous “Amen!” of the English host was answered by shrill cries of “Albin! Albin!” as the Scots came charging on.[729] The glory of the first onset was snatched, much against David’s will, by the men of Galloway, who claimed it as their hereditary right.[730] The second division of the Scottish host comprised the Cumbrians and the men of Teviotdale, and the followers of Eustace Fitz-John. A third body was formed by the men of Lothian and of the western islands, and a fourth by the king’s household troops, a picked band of English and Norman knights commanded by David in person.[731] The English array was simple enough; the whole host stood in one compact mass clustered around the Standard,—the barons and their followers occupying the centre, the archers intermingled with them in front, and the general mass of less well-armed troops of the shire in the rear, with a small detachment of horse posted at a little distance; the main body of both armies fought on foot in the old English fashion. The wild Celts of Galloway dashed headlong upon the English front, only to find their spears and javelins glance off from the helmets and shields of the knights as from an iron wall, while their own half-naked bodies were riddled with a shower of arrows; their leader fell, and they fled in confusion.[732] The second line under the king’s son, Henry, charged with better success; but an Englishman lifted up a gory head upon a pole crying out that it was David’s; and like the English long ago in a like case at Assandun, the Scottish centre at once fled almost without waiting to be attacked.[733] David himself fought on well-nigh alone, till the few who stood around him dragged him off the field, lifted him on horseback, and fairly compelled him to retreat.[734] His scattered troops caught sight of the dragon on his standard,[735] and discovering that he was still alive, rallied enough to enable him to retreat in good order. Henry gathered up the remnants of the royal body-guard—the only mounted division of the army—and with them made a gallant effort to retrieve the day; but the horsemen charged in vain against the English shield-wall, and falling back with shattered spears and wounded horses they were compelled to fling away their accoutrements and escape as best they could.[736] Three days elapsed before Henry himself could rejoin his father at Carlisle.[737] Eleven hundred Scots were said to have been slain in the battle or caught in their flight through the woods and marshes and there despatched.[738] Out of two hundred armed knights only nineteen carried their mail-coats home again;[739] such of the rest as escaped at all escaped only with their lives; and the field was so strewn with baggage, provisions and arms, left behind by the fugitives, that the victors gave it the nickname of Baggamore.[740] The enthusiasm which had carried the Yorkshiremen through the hour of danger carried them also through the temptation of the hour of triumph. They sullied their victory by no attempt at pursuit or retaliation, but simply returned as they had come, in solemn procession, and having restored the holy banners to their several places with joy and thanksgiving, went quietly back every man to his own home.[741] Some three months later the garrison of Carham, having salted their last horse save one, were driven to surrender; but their stubborn defence had won them the right to march out free with the honours of war, and all that David gained was the satisfaction of razing the empty fortress.[742]

The defeat of the Scots was shared by the English baron who had brought them into the land. But Eustace Fitz-John was far from standing alone in his breach of fealty to the English king. All the elements of danger and disruption which had been threatening Stephen ever since his accession suddenly burst forth in the spring of 1138.[743] Between the king and the barons there had been from the first a total lack of confidence. It could not be otherwise; for their mutual obligations were founded on the breach of an earlier obligation contracted by both towards Matilda and her son. There could not fail to be on both sides a feeling that as they had all alike broken their faith to the Empress, so they might at any moment break their faith to each other just as lightly. But on one side the insecurity lay still deeper. Not only was the king not sure of his subjects; he was not sure of himself. How far Stephen was morally justified in accepting the crown after he had sworn fealty to another candidate for it is a question whose solution depends upon that of a variety of other questions which we are not bound to discuss here. Politically, however, he could justify himself only in one way: by proving his fitness for the office which he had undertaken. What he proved was his unfitness for it. Stephen, in short, had done the most momentous deed of his life as he did all the lesser ones, without first counting the cost; and it was no sooner done than he found the cost beyond his power to meet. A thoroughly unselfish hero, a thoroughly unscrupulous tyrant, might have met it successfully, each in his own way. But Stephen was neither hero nor tyrant; he was “a mild man, soft and good—and did no justice.”[744] His weakness shewed itself in a policy of makeshift which only betrayed his uneasiness and increased his difficulties. His first expedient to strengthen his position had been the unlucky introduction of the Flemish mercenaries; his next was the creation of new earldoms in behalf of those whom he regarded as his especial friends, whereby he hoped to raise up an aristocracy wholly devoted to himself, but only succeeded in provoking the resentment and contempt of the older nobility; while to indemnify his new earls for their lack of territorial endowment and give them some means of supporting their titular dignity, he was obliged to provide them with revenues charged upon that of the Crown.[745] But his prodigality had already made the Crown revenues insufficient for his own needs;[746] and the next steps were the debasement of the coinage[747] and the arbitrary spoliation of those whom he mistrusted for the benefit of his insatiable favourites.[748] They grew greedier in asking, and he more lavish in giving; castles, lands, anything and everything, were demanded of him without scruple; and if their demands were not granted the petitioners at once prepared for defiance.[749] He flew hither and thither, but nothing came of his restless activity;[750] he did more harm to himself than to his enemies, giving away lands and honours almost at random, patching up a hollow peace,[751] and then, when he found every man’s hand against him and his hand against every man, bitterly complaining, “Why have they made me king, only to leave me thus destitute? By our Lord’s Nativity, I will not be a king thus disgraced!”[752]

Matters were made worse by his relations with Earl Robert of Gloucester. As son of the late king and half-brother of the Empress; as one of the greatest and wealthiest landowners in England—earl of Gloucester by his father’s grant, lord of Bristol and of Glamorgan by his marriage with the heiress of Robert Fitz-Hamon—all-powerful throughout the western shires and on the Welsh march—Robert was the one man who above all others could most influence the policy of the barons, and whom it was most important for Stephen to conciliate at any cost. Robert had followed the king back to Normandy in 1137; throughout their stay there William of Ypres strove, only too successfully, to set them at variance; a formal reconciliation took place, but it was a mere form;[753] and a few months after Stephen’s return to England he was rash enough to order the confiscation of the earl’s English and Welsh estates, and actually to raze some of his castles.[754] The consequence was that soon after Whitsuntide Robert sent to the king a formal renunciation of his allegiance, and to his vassals in England instructions to prepare for war.[755] This message proved the signal for a general rising. Geoffrey Talbot had already seized Hereford castle;[756] in the north Eustace Fitz-John, as we have seen, joined hands with the Scot king; while throughout the south and west the barons shewed at once that they had been merely waiting for Robert’s decision. Bristol under Robert’s own son;[757] Harptree under William Fitz-John;[758] Castle Cary under Ralf Lovel; Dunster under William of Mohun; Shrewsbury under William Fitz-Alan;[759] Dudley under Ralf Paganel;[760] Burne, Ellesmere, Whittington and Overton under William Peverel;[761] on the south coast, Wareham, another castle of Earl Robert’s, held by Ralf of Lincoln, and Dover, held by Walkelyn Maminot[762]:—all these fortresses, and many more, were openly made ready for defence or defiance; and Stephen’s own constable Miles, who as sheriff of Gloucester had only a few weeks before welcomed him into that city with regal honours,[763] now followed the earl’s example and formally renounced his allegiance.[764]

The full force of the blow came upon Stephen while he was endeavouring to dislodge Geoffrey Talbot from Hereford. After a siege of nearly five weeks’ duration the town caught fire below the bridge; the alarmed rebels offered terms, and Stephen with his usual clemency allowed them to depart free.[765] After taking the neighbouring castle of Weobly, and leaving a garrison there and another at Hereford,[766] he seems to have returned to London[767] and there collected his forces for an attack upon the insurgents in their headquarters at Bristol. Geoffrey Talbot meanwhile made an attempt upon Bath, but was caught and put in ward by the bishop. The latter however was presently captured in his turn by the garrison of Bristol, who threatened to hang him unless their friend was released. The bishop saved his neck by giving up his prize; Stephen in great indignation marched upon Bath, and was, it is said, with difficulty restrained from depriving the bishop of his ring and staff—a statement which tells something of the way in which the king kept his compact towards the Church. He contented himself however with putting a garrison into Bath, and hurried on to the siege of Bristol.[768]

A survey of its environs soon convinced him that he had undertaken a very difficult task. Bristol with its two encircling rivers was a natural stronghold of no common order; and on the one side where nature had left it unprotected, art had supplied the deficiency. The narrow neck of land at the eastern end of the peninsula on which the town stood—the only point whence it could be reached without crossing the water—was in the Conqueror’s last days occupied by a castle which in the Red King’s reign passed into the hands of Robert Fitz-Hamon, famed alike in history and legend as the conqueror of Glamorgan; in those of his son-in-law and successor, Earl Robert of Gloucester,[769] it grew into a mighty fortress, provided with trench and wall, outworks and towers, and all other military contrivances then in use,[770] and surrounded on its exposed eastern side by a moat whose waters joined those of the Avon on the south.[771] Bristol was in fact Robert’s military capital, and under the command of his eldest son it had now become the chief muster-place of all his dispossessed partizans and followers, as well as of a swarm of mercenaries attracted thither from all parts of the country by the advantages of the place and the wealth and renown of its lord.[772] From this stronghold they sallied forth in all directions to do the king all the mischief in their power. They overran his lands and those of his adherents like a pack of hounds; wholesale cattle-lifting was among the least of their misdeeds; every wealthy man whom they could reach was hunted down or decoyed into their den, and there tortured with every refinement of ingenious cruelty till he had given up his uttermost farthing.[773] One Philip Gay, a kinsman of Earl Robert, specially distinguished himself in the contrivance of new methods of torture.[774] In his hands, and those of men like him, Bristol acquired the title of “the stepmother of all England.”[775] If Bristol could be reduced to submission, Stephen’s work would be more than half done. He held a council of war with his barons to deliberate on the best method of beginning the siege. Those who were in earnest about the matter urged the construction of a mole to dam up the narrow strait which formed the haven, whereby not only would the inhabitants be deprived of their chief hope of succour, but the waters, checked in their course and thrown back upon themselves, would swell into a mighty flood and speedily overwhelm the city. Meanwhile, added the supporters of this scheme, Stephen might build a tower on each side of the city to check all ingress and egress by means of the two bridges, while he himself should encamp with his host before the castle and storm or starve it into surrender. Another party, however, whose secret sympathies were with the besieged, argued that whatever material, wood or stone, was used for the construction of the dam would be either swallowed up in the depths of the river or swept away by its current; and they drew such a dismal picture of the hopelessness of the undertaking that Stephen gave it up, and with it all attempt at a siege of Bristol. Turning southward, he struck across the Mendip hills into the heart of Somerset, and besieged William Lovel in Castle Cary,[776] a fortress whose remains, in the shape of three grass-covered mounds, still overlook a little valley where the river Cary takes its rise at the foot of the Polden hills. According to one account, the place yielded to Stephen;[777] according to another,[778] he built over against it a tower in which he left a detachment of soldiers to annoy its garrison, and marched northward to another castle, Harptree, whose site is now buried in the middle of a lonely wood. Harptree was gained by a stratagem somewhat later on;[779] for the present Stephen left it to be harassed by the garrison of Bath, and pursued his northward march to Dudley. Here he made no attempt upon the castle, held against him by Ralf Paganel, but contented himself with burning and harrying the neighbourhood, and then led his host up the Severn to Shrewsbury.[780] The old “town in the scrub,” or bush, as its first English conquerors had called it, had grown under the care of its first Norman earl, Roger of Montgomery, into one of the chief strongholds of the Welsh border. The lands attached to the earldom, forfeited by the treason of Robert of Bellême, had been granted by Henry I. to his second queen, Adeliza; she and her second husband, William of Aubigny, had now thrown themselves into the party of her stepdaughter the Empress; and the castle built by Earl Roger on the neck of a peninsula in the Severn upon which the town of Shrewsbury stands was held in Matilda’s interest by William Fitz-Alan, who had married a niece of Robert of Gloucester.[781] William himself, with his wife and children, slipped out at the king’s approach, leaving the garrison sworn never to surrender. Stephen, however, caused the fosse to be filled with wood, set it on fire, and literally smoked them out.[782] The noblest were hanged; the rest escaped as best they could,[783] while Stephen followed up his success by taking a neighbouring castle which belonged to Fitz-Alan’s uncle Arnulf of Hesdin, and hanging Arnulf himself with ninety-three of his comrades.[784] This unwonted severity acted as a salutary warning which took effect at the opposite end of the kingdom. Queen Matilda, with a squadron of ships manned by sailors from her own county of Boulogne, was blockading Walkelyn Maminot in Dover, when the tidings of her husband’s victories in Shropshire induced Walkelyn to surrender.[785] This was in August.[786] When a truce had been patched up with Ralf Paganel,[787] the west of England might be considered fairly pacified, and Stephen was free to march into Dorsetshire against Earl Robert’s southernmost fortress, Wareham.[788] Nothing, however, seems to have come of this expedition; and Robert himself was still out of reach beyond sea. In the midland shires William Peverel, the lord of the Peak country, was still unsubdued, but he was now almost isolated, for in the north Eustace Fitz-John, as we have seen, had drawn his punishment upon himself from other hands than those of the king. Stephen’s successes in the west, his wife’s success at Dover, were quickly followed by tidings of the victory at Cowton Moor; and meanwhile a peacemaker had come upon the scene.