A Legend of Reading Abbey. Charles MacFarlane
starve two prelates. "I will keep mine uncle's castle for him," said Bishop Nigel, "for they dare not do the thing they speak of." But, alack! his lordship was soon convinced to the contrary; for Bishop Roger himself, already pale and emaciated, was carried to Devizes, and made to state his own case in front of his own castle. And the old man implored his nephew to surrender, and so save the life of his uncle and that of his brother: and then Bishop Nigel gave up that great fortress, and thereupon Bishop Roger and Bishop Alexander were allowed to have food, after they had been three days and three nights in a fearful fast. Before long all three of the bishops were set at liberty, but they had been plundered of nearly all they possessed. The evil advisers of King Stephen got most of the spoil. The robbery did not even a momentary good to the king, and terrible was the penalty he was made to pay for it. The whole body of the dignified clergy turned against him; and even his own brother, Henry, bishop of Winchester, who was now the Pope's legatus for all England, did join the other bishops in charging Stephen with sacrilege. It was his own brother, the legatus, who summoned the king to appear before a synod of bishops at Winchester; and what is brotherly love when weighed in the balance with the duty of every churchman to the church? King Stephen would not attend personaliter, but he sent unto Winchester that Sir Alberic de Vere of whom I have spoken; and Sir Alberic went into the hall of synod with a great company of armed knights, and did there much misuse the prelates of the land, and did refuse, in Stephen's name, to make restitution to Bishop Roger and his two nephews of that of which they had been despoiled; and when he had done these things, Sir Alberic made appeal to the pope and dissolved the council, the wicked knights with him drawing their swords to enforce obedience. The bishops separated for that present, but every one of them saw that madness and much wickedness had prepared the downfall of King Stephen. Bishop Roger died of old age, and grief and indignation, and of the fatal effects of that dread fast; and while he was dying, the plate and money which he had saved from the king's rapacity, which he had devoted to the completion of his glorious church at Sarum, and which he had layed for safety upon the high altar, were seized and carried off by some who cared not for the guilt of sacrilege, and who were so blind that they could not see in what such crimes must end. Forty thousand marks, by our Ladie, was the value of that which was stolen from the shadow of the Holy of Holies!
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