[Footnote 37:  William of Malmesbury. [D.S.]]

It must be confessed that oaths of fealty in this Prince’s reign were feeble ties for binding the subject to any reasonable degree of obedience; and the warmest advocates for liberty cannot but allow, from those examples here produced, that it is very possible for people to run upon great extremes in this matter, that a monarch may be too much limited, and a subject too little; whereof the consequences have been fully as pernicious for the time as the worst that can be apprehended from arbitrary power in all its heights, although not perhaps so lasting or so hard to be remedied; since all the miseries of this kingdom, during the period we are treating of, were manifestly owing to that continual violation of such oaths of allegiance, as appear to have been contrived on purpose by ambitious men to be broken at pleasure, without the least apprehension of perjury, and in the mean time keep the prince in a continual slavish dependence.

The Earl of Gloucester, soon after his release, went over into Normandy, where he found the Earl of Anjou employed in completing the conquest of that duchy; there he delivered him the sons of several English noblemen, to be kept as hostages for their fathers’ fidelity to the Empress, and used many arguments for persuading him to come over in person with an army to her assistance:  but Geoffrey excused himself by the importance of other affairs, and the danger of exposing the dominions he had newly acquired to rebellions in his absence.  However, he lent the Earl of Gloucester a supply of four hundred men, and sent along with him his eldest son Henry, to comfort his mother, and be shewn to the people.

During the short absence of the Earl of Gloucester, the Empress was closely besieged in Oxford by the King; and provisions beginning to fail, she was in cruel apprehensions of falling into his hands.  This gave her occasion to put in practice the only talent wherein she seemed to excel, which was that of contriving some little shift or expedient to secure her person upon any sudden emergency.  A long season of frost had made the Thames passable upon the ice, and much snow lay on the ground; Maud with some few attendants clad all in white, to avoid being discovered from the King’s camp, crossed the river at midnight on foot, and travelling all night, got safe to Wallingford Castle, where her brother and young son Henry, newly returned from France, arrived soon after, to her great satisfaction:  but Oxford, immediately upon the news of her flight, surrendered to the King.

However, this disgrace was fully compensated soon after by another of the same kind, which happened to King Stephen; for whilst he and his brother of Winchester were fortifying a nunnery at Wilton, to bridle his enemies at Salisbury, who very much harassed those parts by their frequent excursions, the Earl of Gloucester, who watched all opportunities, came unaware with a strong body of men, and set fire on the nunnery while the King himself was in it.  Stephen, upon the sudden surprise of the thing, wholly lost or forgot his usual courage, and fled shamefully away, leaving his soldiers to be cut in pieces by the Earl.