enemies’ country, as towards their native land. But wherever they were found, they were killed like sheep for slaughter; and so by the righteous judgment of God, those who had woefully slain and left the dead unburied were themselves more woefully cut to pieces, and found no burial after the fashion of their own or the foreigners’ land, but were exposed to dogs, birds and wild beasts, or torn and dismembered, or left to decay and putrefy under the open sky. The king also, who a short time before in his excessive pride of heart and in the magnitude of his army seemed to have raised his head among the stars of heaven, and therefore threatened to destroy utterly the whole or the greatest part of England, was now shorn of his glory, and accompanied by but a few, and covered with the utmost shame and disgrace, scarcely escaped alive. The degree of the divine vengeance appeared most clearly in the fact that the army of the vanquished was beyond estimation larger than that of the conquerors; nor could the number of the slain be counted by any man. For, as many bear witness, of the army which left Scotland alone, more than ten thousand are reckoned to have been missing from the ranks of those who returned, for throughout divers parts of Deira, Bernicia, Northumberland, Cumberland and other districts, many more were cut off after the battle than were slain in the battle. The English army, on the other hand, lost few of its numbers, speedily gaining a victory by God’s aid; and dividing the booty which was found there in great quantities, in a short while almost wholly broke up, and every man returned to his own home, restoring to the churches with joy and thanksgiving the banners of the saints which they had received. Verily they had marched to this battle in their finest array and all their wealth, as it had been to a royal marriage feast. KING STEPHEN’S ATTACK ON THE BISHOPS (1139). =Source.=--William of Malmesbury, _Historia Novella_, ed. Stubbs, vol. ii., pp. 547-555. (Rolls Series.)