Cerney, which the king had garrisoned, as I have said; and the castle which Stephen had fortified over against Wallingford, he levelled to the ground. He also, in these difficult times, created his brother Rainald, earl of Cornwall. Nor indeed did the king show less spirit in performing the duties of his station; for he omitted no occasion of repeatedly beating off his adversaries, and defending his own possessions. But he failed of success, and all things declined, for lack of justice. Dearth of provisions, too, increased by degrees, and the scarcity of good money was so great, from its being counterfeited, that, sometimes out of ten or more shillings, hardly a dozen pence would be received. The king himself was reported to have ordered the weight of the penny, as established in king Henry's time, to be reduced, because, having exhausted the vast treasures of his predecessor, he was unable to provide for the expense of so many soldiers. All things, then, became venal in England; and churches and abbeys were no longer secretly, but even publicly exposed to sale.
During this year, in Lent, on the thirteenth before the kalends of April, at the ninth hour of the fourth day of the week, there was an eclipse, throughout England, as I have heard. With us, indeed, and with all our neighbours, the obscuration of the sun was so remarkable, that persons sitting at table, as it then happened almost every where, for it was Lent, at first feared that chaos was come again: afterwards learning its cause, they went out, and beheld the stars around the sun. It was thought and said by many, not untruly, that the king would not continue a year in the government.
In the following week, that is, during the time of the Passion, on the seventh before the kalends of April, the forementioned barbarian, Robert Fitz-Hubert, a character well calculated for the stratagems of war, surprised the castle of Devizes:[1] a man, by far the most cruel of any within the circle of this age's memory: blasphemous, also, towards God. He used voluntarily to boast of having been present at a place where twenty-four monks were burnt, together with the church, declaiing, that he too would
- ↑ This he effected by means of scaling ladders, made of thongs of leather. Gest. Stephani, 951.
