By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson. 86 



ftnd all declared that the oath was no longer binding. " I have 

 often heard Bishop Roger say," (these are the words of "William the 

 Monk of Malmesbury, who certainly had no special reason for 

 loving the Bishop, for the Bishop had taken 8ome|phat peremptory 

 possession of the revenue of Malmesbury Monastery) — " I have 

 often heard Bishop Roger say, that he was freed from the oath 

 which he had taken to the Empress : for that he and the others 

 had sworn conditionally: on the condition, namely, that the King 

 should not marry his daughter without his consent, and that of the 

 rest of the nobility: that none of them advised the match, or 

 indeed, knew that it was made." Some writers do not attach much 

 credit to Bishop Roger's apology, but think the real reason to have 

 been that he and other ecclesiastics joined Stephen, hoping to be 

 able to make with Stephen better terms than they could with the 

 lady. That may or may not have been so : but the end of the story 

 is that Stephen, wanting as many castles as he could get, contrived 

 a quarrel with the Bishop of Sarum with the design of seizing the 

 Castle of Devizes. The Bishop was brought as a prisoner to the 

 town, shut up in a cowhouse under his own castle wall, and kept 

 there, until the castle was given up. He lived a few years longer: 

 long enough to see himself stripped of money, goods, palaces and 

 lands : and so humbled, this " old man broken with the storms 

 of state, gave all his honours to the world again, and slept in peace." 

 History may be, as it has been called, " Philosophy teaching by 

 example ;" but alas for poor Philosophy ! She must be content, 

 like other teachers, to find that her lessons are not always remem- 

 bered when they should be. For among later performances on 

 the stage of English History we find, with new dresses and new 

 scenery, the play of Bishop Roger over again ; the principal 

 character being next time performed by the Ipswich butcher's son, 

 who rose so high as to talk of " I and my King," and then fell so 

 low as to crave at the gate of Leicester Abbey, " a little earth, for 

 charity ! " 



So Stephen became owner of Devizes Castle. It was soon the 

 scene of another strange adventure. A foreigner, named Robert 

 Fitz-Hubert, giving himself out as a partizan for the Empress, 



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