The Conquering Family Read Online Free PDF

few stops for rest, until they reached Oxford, where they finally came to a halt. It is said that after each stop several faces were missed from the ranks. Doubts had entered the minds of the barons. They were no longer sure they wanted as ruler a lady of such haughty temper.
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    Now the struggle was on again. The Londoners swelled the ranks of the men from Kent and Suffolk, and under the lead of Matilda and William of Ypres they advanced to the siege of Winchester. The forces of the Empress, led by Robert of Gloucester and her uncle, King David of Scotland, decided to make this a test of strength by marching to the relief of the city. Stephen’s bishop brother had changed back and had ensconced himself in his strong episcopal palace which lay outside the walls and from which he rained fireballs into that storied city of high church spires. In the course of the struggle, which lasted nine weeks, a score of the fine churches were destroyed and whole sections were laid waste. The army of the Empress was finally compelled to retreat. Robert of Gloucester, fighting a rear-guard action to cover the escape of his sister, was made a prisoner.
    Now the situation was much improved from that desperate phase when Matilda had made her pathetic proffer to her stern rival. Being scrupulously careful to have the new captive comfortably housed and kindly treated, the Queen offered to trade the brother of the Empress for Stephen, who was still, from all reports, shackled to the wall of his Bristol cell. The refusal of the Empress was as short and sharp and peremptory as ever. Her brother was so completely the soul and brain of her cause that his absence might very well bring her to disaster; knowing this, she still held out. Twelve captive earls she would give and even throw in a sum of gold, which was getting scarce in both camps, but not Stephen.
    Then the Queen went direct to the Lady Amabel, who acted as keeper of the person of the King. The Lady Amabel did not stand on ceremony, nor did she consult the Empress in the matter. She had heard that Robert was to be sent to one of the massive Norman keeps in Boulogne where, presumably, he would find captivity as hard as Stephen. Before the Empress knew what was in the wind, the two wives had agreed to trade even. Stephen, a free man, rode in to Winchester to be greeted by his victorious Matilda, a sadder, certainly, but not much wiser man.
    The war dragged on for several years, the one dramatic occurrence being the siege of Oxford Castle into which the Empress had withdrawn while her brother went to Anjou for her young son Henry, it being thought that the presence of the princeling would inject new enthusiasm into a waning cause. The attack was pressed by Stephen with such vigor that it soon became apparent the defenders could not long hold out. When things reached this desperate pass, the Empress and four of her supporters garbed themselves in white robes and ventured out from a postern which opened on the river. It was in the dead of winter, the ground was covered with deep snow, and a blinding storm was sweeping down from the north. The sentries posted along the river did not see the five ghostly figures fighting their way through the lines. After as grueling a struggle with the elements as any woman ever endured, the party reached a village to the west where horses were obtained.
    While the rival claimants continued the contest with siege and countersiege and foray and skirmish, merrie England became the least merrie country in the known world. As no attempt at administration was made in a land given over to factional strife, the barons became the rulers. Each was now a petty king. They did as they pleased, seized everything they wanted, from the lands of a freeman to the pretty daughter of a villein, turned their tall castles into headquarters for an iron oppression, and built new ones at points which made possible the extension of their operations. In the dungeons of these castles the