It was a heavy task, however, to win over the goodwill of the men of London, for though these events took place, as I have said, immediately after Easter, it was only a few days before Midsummer that they consented to receive the empress. By that time the greater part of England had duly accepted her governance.... But at the very moment when she thought to secure possession of the whole of England, all was changed. The men of London, always mistrusted, and murmuring among themselves, now burst out into expressions of open hatred, and even, it is said, lay in wait for the Lady and her earls. They had warning and escaped, and left the city gradually without rioting and with a kind of knightly discipline. The empress was accompanied by the legate and David king of Scotland, her uncle, and her brother Robert, then as always, in all things, the partner of his sister’s fortunes, and, in short, all of her party escaped to a man. The men of London, learning of their departure, flew to their houses and plundered everything which they had left behind in their haste. THE CAREER OF GEOFFREY DE MANDEVILLE (1143.) =Source.=--William of Newburgh, _Historia rerum Anglicarum_, ed. Howlett, vol. i., p. 44. (Rolls Series, Chronicles of Stephen, Henry II., and Richard I.) At the same time king Stephen seized Geoffrey de Mandeville in his court at St. Albans, not indeed honourably and according to the law of nations, but for his deserts and out of fear, with an eye rather to the expedient than to the chivalrous. For Geoffrey was a man of consummate daring and of equal strength and cunning, strengthening his hold on the famous Tower of London with two noteworthy added fortifications, and achieving great ends by an ingenious subtlety. For these reasons he inspired fear in the king himself, who, however, was at pains to conceal his sense of wrong suffered at the other’s hands, and watched for a convenient season to take his revenge.