were concealed, or crippled in frames which did not suffer them to move, or held just resting on the ground by sharp iron collars round the neck. The Earl of Essex used to send out spies who begged from door to door, and then reported in what houses wealth was still left; the alms-givers were presently seized and imprisoned. The towns that could no longer pay the blackmail demanded from them were burned. ... Sometimes the peasants, maddened by misery, crowded to the roads that led from a field of battle, and smote down the fugitives without any distinction of sides. The bishops cursed vainly, when the very churches were burned and monks robbed. 'To till the ground was to plough the sea; the earth bare no corn, for the land was all laid waste by such deeds, and men said openly that Christ slept, and his saints. Such things, and more than we can say, suffered we nineteen winters for our sins' (A. S. Chronicle). ... Many soldiers, sickened with the unnatural war, put on the white cross and sailed for a nobler battle-field in the East." As Matilda's son Henry--afterwards Henry II.--grew to manhood, the feeling in his favor gained strength and his party made head against the weak and incompetent Stephen. Finally, in 1153, peace was brought about under an agreement "that Stephen should wear the crown till his death, and Henry receive the homage of the lords and towns of the realm as heir apparent." Stephen died the next year and Henry came to the throne with little further dispute. _C. H. Pearson, History of England During the Early and Middle Ages, chapter 28._