brought up her strength and besieged them, till there was so great a famine in the town, they could endure it no longer Then stole they out and lied, and the besiegers were aware of them, and followed them, and they took Robert earl of Gloucester and led him to Rochester, and imprisoned him there: and the empress fled into a monastery. Then wise men, friends of the king and of the earl, interfered between them, and they settled that the king should be let out of prison for the earl, and the earl for the king; and this was done. After this the king and earl Randolph were reconciled at Stamford, and they took oaths and pledged their troth, that neither would betray the other: but this promise was set at nought, for the king afterwards seized the earl in Northampton through wicked counsel, and put him in prison, but he set him free soon after, through worse, on condition that he should swear on the cross, and find hostages that he would give up all his castles. Some he did deliver up, and others not; and he did worse than he should have done in this country. Now was England much divided, some held with the king and some with the empress, for when the king was in prison the earls and the great men thought that he would never more come out, and they treated with the empress, and brought her to Oxford, and gave her the town. When the king was out of prison he heard this, and he took his army and besieged her in the tower, and they let her down from the tower by night with ropes, and she stole away, and she fled: and she went on foot to Wallingford. After this she went over sea, and all the Normans turned from the king to the earl of Anjou, some willingly, and some against their will; for he besieged them till they gave up their castles, and they had no help from the king. Then the king's son Eustace went to France, and took to wife the sister of the king of France: he thought to obtain Normandy through this marriage, but little he sped, and that of right, for he was an evil man, and did more harm than good wherever he went : he spoiled the lands, and laid thereon heavy taxes : he brought his wife to England, and put her into the castle of ;[1] she was a good woman but she had little bliss with him, and it was not the will of Christ that he
- ↑ "The MS. is here deficient; but . . . . b for 'byrig' is discernible."—Ingram
