Before the swallows made their next return to our meads and river sides, the flames of war were again kindled in our near neighbourhood. When that I heard Sir Ingelric had stolen back into the island with an Angevin band, and that Brian Fitzcount, through the treachery of some of King Stephen's people, had been allowed to win his way into his inexpugnable castle at Wallingford with great supply of munitions of war, I did foresee that the year eleven hundred and fifty-three would be a year of storm and trouble to Reading Abbey, and to all the country besides. Sir Ingelric's return was soon notified to us by the burning of divers villages between Reading and Speen, and by the sudden plunder and devastation of some of our own outlying manors; and while we were grieving at these things, news was brought to us that Brian Fitzcount had called upon all the castle holders in the west to take up arms, not for the Countess Matilda, but for her son Henry; and that the said Sir Brian had ravaged well nigh all the country from Wallingford to Oxenford, making a great prey of men and cattle. Sir Alain de Bohun and our stout-hearted Abbat Reginald collected such force as they could, and marched in quest of Sir Ingelric; but that cruel knight fled at their approach, and then retreated into the far west. King Stephen made an appeal to the wealthy and warlike citizens of London, who were ever truer to him than were his great barons, and being well furnished with arms and men, and the great machines proper for the sieges of strong places, the king went straight to Wallingford with a determination not to remove thence until he had reduced that terrible castle. This time he came not unto our abbey, but the lord abbat sent some of our retainers to assist in the great siege; and as all the lords that were true to the king marched with the best of their vassals to Wallingford, a great army was collected there. Of the people of that vicinage, every free man that was at all able to work repaired to the king's camp, and offered his labour for the capture and destruction of Brian Fitzcount's den. A deep trench was speedily cut all round the castle, and such bulwarks and palisadoes were made that none could come out of the place or enter therein; and catapults were in readiness to batter the walls, and mines were digging that would have caused the keep to totter and fall. Certes, the emprise was close to a successful issue, when tidings were brought that Henry Plantagenet had landed in the south-west with one hundred and forty knights, and three thousand foreign foot soldiers, that all the great barons of the west were proclaiming him to be the lawful king of England, and were joining his standard, and that he was moving with a mighty force to lay siege to Malmesbury. King Stephen had found no more faith abroad than he had found at home. Ludovicus, the French king, having many weighty reasons to mislike and fear Henry Plantagenet, had made a treaty of alliance