Great Britain -- History -- Anglo-Saxon period, 449-1066 -- Sources
and put him in prison, but he set him free soon after, through worse,
on condition that he should swear on the cross and find hostages that
he would give up all his castles. Some he did deliver up, and others
not; and he did worse than he should have done in this country. Now
was England much divided, some held with the King and some with the
Empress, for when the King was in prison the Earls and the great men
thought that he would never more come out, and they treated with the
Empress, and brought her to Oxford, and gave her the town. When the
King was out of prison he heard this, and he took his army and besieged
her in the tower, and they let her down from the tower by night with
ropes, and she stole away, and she fled: and she went on foot to
Wallingford. After this she went over sea, and all the Normans turned
from the King to the Earl of Anjou, some willingly, and some against
their will; for he besieged them till they gave up their castles, and
they had no help from the King. Then the King’s son Eustace went to
France, and took to wife the sister of the King of France: he thought
to obtain Normandy through this marriage, but little he sped, and that
of right, for he was an evil man, and did more harm than good wherever
he went: he spoiled the lands, and laid thereon heavy taxes: he brought
his wife to England, and put her into the castle of ----; she was a
good woman but she had little bliss with him, and it was not the will
of Christ that he should bear rule long, and he died, and his mother
also. And the Earl of Anjou died, and his son Henry succeeded him; and
the Queen of France was divorced from the the King, and she went to the
young Earl Henry and he took her to wife, and received all Poitou with
her. Then he came into England with a great army and won castles; and
the King marched against him with a much larger army, howbeit they did
not fight, but the Archbishop and wise men went between them and made
a treaty on these terms; that the King should be Lord and King while
he lived, and that Henry should be King after his death, and that he
should consider him as his father, and the King him as his son, and
that peace and concord should be between them, and in all England.
The King, and the Earl, and the Bishop, and the Earls, and all the
great men swore to observe these and the other conditions that were
then made. The Earl was received with much honour at Winchester and at
London, and all did homage to him, and swore to keep the peace, and it
soon became a very good peace, such as never was in this land. Then the
King was more powerful here than ever he was; and the Earl went over
sea, and all the people loved him, because he did good justice, and
made peace.
1154.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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