of Glastonbury, who had lately revolted from the empress. Robert then, at the beginning of Advent, summoned the whole of Matilda's partisans to Cirencester: where all resolving to afford their sovereign every possible assistance, they meditated a march to Oxford; courageously determining to give the king battle, unless he retreated. But as they were on their route, the pleasing account reached them, that the empress had escaped from the blockaded castle at Oxford, and was now at Wallingford in security. Turning aside thither, then, at the suggestion of their sovereign, since the soldiers who had remained at her departure, after delivering up the castle, had gone away without molestation, and the holidays admonished them to repose awhile, they resolved to abstain from battle, and retired to their homes.
I would very willingly subjoin the manner of the empress's liberation, did I know it to a certainty; for it is undoubtedly one of God's manifest miracles. This, however, is sufficiently notorious, that, through fear of the earl's approach, many of the besiegers at Oxford stole away wherever they were able, and the rest remitted their vigilance, and kept not so good a look out as before; more anxious for their own safety, in case it came to a battle, than bent on the destruction of others.[1] This circumstance being remarked by the townsmen, the empress, with only four soldiers, made her escape through a small postern, and passed the river. Afterwards, as necessity sometimes, and indeed, almost always, discovers means and ministers courage, she went to Abingdon on foot, and thence reached Wallingford on horse-back. But this I purpose describing more fully, if, by God's permission, I shall ever learn the truth of it from those who were present.
- ↑ One of the MSS. omits from, "This circumstance," to the end, and substitutes, . . . . " but these matters, with God's permission, shall be more largely treated in the following volume."
