The enormities ascribed to Sinnis and his fellows have discredited the whole train of adventures to which they belong; but this is an untenable ground of doubt. He who reads descriptions of the state of England, before laws were strong enough to control private violence, given by contemporaries who saw what they relate, and whose narratives bear the impress of sincerity, will better appreciate the extent of human ferocity. In the reign of Stephen disorder was at its height. “The barons cruelly oppressed the wretched men of the land with castle–works, and when the castles were made, they filled them with devils and evil men. Then took they those whom they supposed to have any goods, both by night and day, labouring men and women, and threw them into the prison for their gold and silver, and inflicted on them unutterable tortures: for never were any martyrs so tortured as they were. Some they hanged up by the feet, and smoked them with foul smoke, and some by the thumbs, or the head, and hung coats of mail on their feet. They tied knotted cords about their heads, and twisted them until the pain went to their brains. They put them into dungeons where were adders, and snakes, and toads, and so destroyed them. Some they placed in a crucet house; that is, in a chest that was short and narrow, and not deep, wherein they put sharp stones, and so thrust the man therein, that they broke all the limbs. In many of the castles were things loathsome and grim, called Sachenteges, of which two or three men had enough to bear one. They were thus made: they were fastened to a beam, having a sharp iron to go about a man’s throat, so that he could in no direction either sit, or lie, or sleep, but bear all that iron. Many thousands they wore out with hunger. I neither can, nor may I tell all the wounds and pains which they inflicted on wretched men in this land.”[15]