About the eleventh year of the King's reign, young Henry, now growing towards a man, was sent for to France by a message from his father, who was desirous to see him; but left a considerable party in England, to adhere to his interests; and in a short time after (as some write[38]) the Empress herself grown weary of contending any longer in a cause where she had met with nothing but misfortunes of her own procuring, left the kingdom likewise, and retired to her husband. Nor was this the only good fortune that befell Stephen; for before the year ended, the main prop and pillar of his enemies was taken away by death; this was Robert Earl of Gloucester, than whom there have been few private persons known in the world that deserve a fairer place and character in the registers of time, for his inviolable faith, disinterested friendship, indefatigable zeal, and firm constancy to the cause he espoused, and unparalleled generosity in the conduct thereof: he adhered to his sister in all her fortunes, to the ruin of his own; he placed a crown on her head; and when she had lost it by her folly and perverseness refused the greatest offers from a victorious enemy, who had him in his power, and chose to continue a prisoner rather than recover his liberty by any hazard to her pretensions: he bore up her sinking title in spite of her own frequent miscarriages, and at last died in her cause by a fever contracted with perpetual toils for her service. An example fit to be shewn the world, although few perhaps are like to follow it; but however, a small tribute of praise, justly due to extraordinary virtue, may prove no ill expedient to encourage imitation. [Footnote 38: Gervase. [D.S.]] But the death of this lord, together with the absence of the Empress and her son in France, added very little to the quiet or security of the King. For the Earl of Gloucester, suspecting the fidelity of the lords, had, with great sagacity, delivered their sons to the Earl of Anjou, to be kept as pledges for their fathers' fidelity, as we have before related: by which means a powerful party was still kept up against Stephen, too strong to be suddenly broken. Besides, he had, by an unusual strain of his conduct, lately lost much good-will, as well as reputation, in committing an act of violence and fraud on the person of the Earl of Chester, a principal adherent of the Empress. This nobleman, of great power and possessions, had newly reconciled himself to Stephen, and came to his court at Northampton, where, against all laws of hospitality, as well as common faith and justice, he was committed to prison, and forced to buy his liberty with the surrender of Lincoln, and all his other places, into the King's hands. 1149. 1150.