besieged, he engaged in a hazardous conflict, and took the king prisoner. This fortunate event, however, was somewhat obscured by his own capture at Winchester, as I have recorded in the transactions of the former year; though by the grace of God, he showed himself, not so much an object of commiseration, as of praise, in that capture. For, when he saw that the royalist earls were so persevering in the pursuit that the business could not be gotten through without loss on his part, he sent forward all those for whom he was under apprehension, and more especially the empress. When they had proceeded far enough to escape in safety, he followed leisurely, that the retreat might not resemble a flight, and received the attack of the pursuers himself; thus purchasing, by his own detention, the liberty of his friends. And now, even at the moment of his capture, no one, as I have said above, perceived him either dispirited, or humbled in language: he seemed so far to tower above fortune, that he compelled his persecutors, for I am loth to call them enemies, to respect him. Wherefore the queen, though she might have remembered, that her husband had been fettered by his command, yet never sufiered a bond of any kind to be put upon him, nor presumed on her dignity to treat him dishonourably. And finally at Rochester, for thither he was conducted, he went freely whither he pleased, to the churches below the castle, and conversed with whom he chose, the queen only being present (for after her departure he was held in free custody in the keep) and so calm and serene was his mind, that, getting money from his vassals in Kent, he bought some valuable horses, which were both serviceable and beneficial to him afterwards.
The earls, and those whose business it was to speak of such matters, at first, tried if he would allow of the king and himself being liberated on equal terms. Though his countess, Mabil, out of solicitude for her beloved husband, would have embraced these terms the moment she heard them, being, through conjugal affection, bent on his liberation, yet he, in his wiser policy, refused: asserting that a king and an earl were not of equal importance; however, if they would allow all who had been taken with him, or for him, to be set at liberty, to this he might consent. But the earls and other royalists would not assent to these terms; they were
