THE SCENE: Behold the parable of Geoffrey de Mandeville, who has been described as, “the most perfect and typical presentment of the feudal and anarchic spirit that stamps the reign of Stephen.”
THE TEXT: At this time king Stephen, attending more to what was expedient than what was strictly honorable, seized Geoffrey de Mandeville, in his court at St. Albans, not quite fairly, indeed, and consistently with the law of nations, but according to his deserts and his own fear. For he was a most desperate character, and possessed of equal power and artifice. He was master of the celebrated Tower of London, together with two other considerable fortresses, and he aimed at great things by his consummate craft.
On a meeting of the nobility being summoned by the king’s command at St. Albans, this freebooter made his appearance amongst the rest, and the king, seizing this opportunity for exercising his just indignation, threw him into confinement, and deprived him of the Tower of London, with the two other fortresses he possessed. Despoiled of his strongholds, but set at liberty, this restless man — vast in design, and subtle beyond comparison, as well as wise beyond measure, for the perpetration of evil — collecting a band of desperadoes, seized the monastery of Ramsey, and, without the least compunction at having expelled the monks, and made so celebrated and holy a place a den of thieves, and converted the sanctuary of God into the habitation of the devil, he infested the neighborhood with perpetual attacks and incursions.
Then, gaining confidence from his success, he proceeded further, and harassed and alarmed king Stephen with the most daring aggressions; and, while he was thus continuing his mad career, God seemed to sleep, and to be regardless both of the affairs of men and His own. At length, just before the death of this wicked man, as it is asserted by the credible relation of many persons, the walls of the church which he had seized and of the adjoining cloister exuded real blood, by which, as it afterwards appeared, was signified, as well the heinousness of his crime as its impending punishment.
Thus, whilst his abandoned partisans — given up to a reprobate mind — were in nowise terrified at such a tremendous omen, the wretch himself — amidst the thickest of his troops — attacking a fortress of the enemy, was struck on the head with an arrow by a common foot-soldier. Although this ferocious man at first disregarded his wound as trifling, yet he died in consequence of it a few days afterwards, and carried with him to hell the indissoluble bond of an ecclesiastical anathema.
– History of English Affairs, William of Newburgh, 12th Century AD
