No sooner did intelligence that the day was going against the Count de Perche and the Anglo-Norman barons spread through Lincoln than consternation prevailed among the women whose kinsmen were connected with the army doomed to defeat. Many of them, indeed, left their houses to avoid insult, and, embarking on the Witham in boats, endeavoured to escape with their children and servants, and such valuable property as they could carry. Events proved that their fears were not unfounded. In fact, notwithstanding the discipline maintained by Pembroke, and the desire which he naturally felt to save the country from violence and spoliation, he could not, in the hour of triumph, save Lincoln from the horrors of war. Flushed with victory and eager for spoil, the royalists, after having assured themselves that their foes were utterly beaten, assumed all the airs of conquerors, and acted as if they had a right to everything in the shape of plunder on which they could lay hands. At first the victors contented themselves with rifling the waggons and sumpter-mules containing the baggage of the French and the barons, and found much booty in the shape of silver vessels and rich furniture of various kinds. But this merely whetted their appetites for booty, and, spreading rapidly over the city, they began to pillage the houses, rushing from place to place with axes and hammers, and breaking open store-rooms and chests, and seizing upon gold and silver goblets, and jewels, and gold rings, and women’s ornaments, and rich garments. Nothing, in fact, seems to have come amiss to them that was not too hot or too heavy, and the churches were not respected any more than the houses. Even the cathedral was not spared. In fact, the clergy of Lincoln, being, like the bishop, stanch partisans of Prince Louis, and under sentence of excommunication, were not only odious to the king’s friends, but looked on by the English soldiers as persons whom they, as faithful sons of the Church, were justified in plundering. Meantime the women who had embarked on the Witham with their children and domestics had not been fortunate in their efforts to escape. Much too eager to leave the scene of carnage to be cautious in the mode of doing so, they overloaded the boats to a dangerous degree, and when fairly afloat they neither knew how to row nor steer. As a consequence, serious evil befel them through the boats getting foul of one another, and by various causes, and many of the fair fugitives went to the bottom of the river with the property which they had been anxious to save, “so that,” says the chronicler, “there were afterwards found in the river by searchers goblets of silver and many other articles of value, for the boats had been overloaded, and the women, not knowing how to manage them, all perished.”