Sir Ingelric of Huntercombe and the other knights whose houses had been destroyed by the so sudden onset of their enemies, regained possession of their lands; and, in other parts of the kingdom, Stephen, by force of arms, or by treaty, recovered nearly all the castles which had been taken from him. Merciful was the soul of King Stephen, even as that of our lord abbat; for, although he lopped off the hands of some few of the mean sort, he took not the life of one lord or knight, but, upon submission made, did pardon them all their late rebellion. The empress's illegitimate half-brother, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, fled beyond sea; and when he was safe in Anjou, he sent his defiance to Stephen, wherein he renounced his homage, and called the king usurper. But before he fled out of England, Earl Robert had made a great league with many of our barons, and had induced the Scottish king to engage to invade our land with all the forces he could collect. King Stephen was again triumphant over his many foes; he took castle after castle from the English barons, and rarely began a siege which did not end prosperously. When the Scots, and Gallowegians, and Highlanders, and men of the Isles, burst into Northumberland and advanced into Yorkshire, Stephen was not there; but the army that was collected for him by Thurstan, my lord archbishop of York, and that was commanded for him in the field by Ranulph, my lord bishop of Durham, and by William Peveril and Walter Espee of Nottinghamshire, and Gilbert de Lacy and his brother Walter de Lacy of Yorkshire, gained a glorious and most complete victory over the Scottish barbarians at Northallerton in the great battle of the Standard, slaying twelve thousand of them. The country, and the poor people of it, suffered much during these sieges, and intestine wars, and foreign invasions; but they came not near to Reading Abbey, and King Stephen was everywhere successful, until, in an evil hour for him and for all of us, he did violence to the church in order to satisfy the rapacity of his ungodly men of war. For ye must know that King Stephen, in order to gain the affections of the lay baronage, had given away so many lands and so much money, that he had now nought left to give, and still those barons cried "Give! give! or we will declare for the empress." "I see a flaw in your title, therefore give me two more castles," said one great lord. "I see two flaws, therefore give me four more castles that I may support your right," said another great lord. "I fought for thee at Northallerton, and therefore must have some domain for my guerdon," said another. But castles, domains, all had been given away already; there remained not of the crown lands enough to keep the king and his household, and as for the treasury, it had long been empty. Seeing that Stephen was like a spunge that had been squeezed, and that nothing was to be gotten except by war and change of government, sundry of these