He, my light, my joy, my crown, THE END OF THE LETTER TO WALTER. THE ACTS OF STEPHEN, KING OF ENGLAND AND DUKE OF NORMANDY. BY AN UNKNOWN BUT CONTEMPORANEOUS AUTHOR. Y return to my subject. Returning into France triumphant, the duke was joyfully received by his mother and brothers, and the people of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and Poitou, with the honours due to him. King Stephen, also, now for the first time reigning in peace, was, thanks to his adopted son, powerful enough to maintain the authority of his royal station. But O! the desperate fury of mortals! O their unaccountable perversity! Certain sons of men, "whose teeth were spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword," made zealous attempts to sow the seeds of discord between the king who was present and the duke at a distance. The king could hardly resist their persuasions, and some thought he was already yielding to them, and that he listened to their evil counsels with a secret pleasure, and, though he affected to discountenance them, more than was right. But the counsels of these sons of men were one thing, the counsels of the Almighty another; and He, as was fitting, perfected his own, and made the counsels of the wicked and their perverse machinations of no effect. The king having besieged and taken the castle of Drake, near York, and triumphantly taken and razed many other castles, he went to Dover, to hold a conference with the Earl of Flanders. While talking with him, the king fell sick; of which sickness he died eight days before the feast of All Saints [24th of October], after a distracted and unfortunate reign of nineteen years. He was interred in the abbey of Feversham, near his wife and son. Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, with many of the English nobles, dispatched messengers in all haste to their now lord the Duke of Normandy, intreating him to come over without delay, and receive the crown of England. Hindered, however, by contrary winds and a stormy sea, as well as other circumstances, it was not till six days before Christmas that, accompanied by his wife and brothers, with a retinue of great nobles and a strong force, he landed in the New Forest. England, therefore, was left for six weeks without a king; but by God's providence it was in perfect tranquillity, the love or the fear of the expected king securing it. Upon his landing he proceeded to London, and, ascending the throne of England, was crowned and consecrated with THE ACTS OF KING STEPHEN. BOOK I. On the death of King Henry, who had given peace to the realm, and was the father of his people, his loss threw the whole kingdom into trouble and confusion. During his reign the law was purely administered in the seats of justice; but when he was removed, iniquity prevailed, and they became the seed-beds of corruption. Thenceforth, England, before the resting-place of right, the habitation of peace, and the mirror of piety, was converted into an abode of malignity, a theatre of strife, and a school of rebellion. The sacred bonds of mutual concord, before reverenced by the nation, were rent asunder; the ties of near relationship were dissolved; and the people, long clothed in the garments of peace, clamoured, and became frantic for war. Seized with a new fury, they began to run riot against each other; and the more a man injured the innocent, the higher he thought of himself. The sanctions of the law, which form the restraint of a rude population, were totally disregarded and set at nought; and men, giving the reins to all iniquity, plunged without hesitation into whatever crimes their inclinations prompted. In the words of the prophet, "There was no soundness from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head;" for from the lowest to the highest their minds were diseased and wrought violence, or sanctioned the violence of others by silent assent. Even the wild animals, which in former times were preserved peaceably in parks and inclosures throughout the country, were now turned loose, and harassed, every one hunting them |