During the rest of the war, although it lasted nine years longer, there is little memorable recorded by any writer; whether the parties being pretty equal, and both sufficiently tired with so long a contention, wanted vigour and spirit to make a thorough conquest, and only endeavoured to keep what they had, or whether the multitude of strong castles, whose number daily increased, made it very difficult to end a war between two contending powers almost in balance; let the cause be what it will, the whole time passed in mutual sieges, surprises, revolts, surrenders of fortified places, without any decisive action, or other event of importance to be related.  By which at length the very genius of the people became wholly bent upon a life of spoil, robbery, and plunder; many of the nobles, although pretending to hold their castles for the King or the Empress, lived like petty independent princes in a perpetual state of war against their neighbours; the fields lay uncultivated, all the arts of civil life were banished, no veneration left for sacred persons or things; in short, no law, truth, or religion among men, but a scene of universal misery, attended with all the consequences of an embroiled and distracted state.

About the eleventh year of the King’s reign, young Henry, now growing towards a man, was sent for to France by a message from his father, who was desirous to see him; but left a considerable party in England, to adhere to his interests; and in a short time after (as some write[38]) the Empress herself grown weary of contending any longer in a cause where she had met with nothing but misfortunes of her own procuring, left the kingdom likewise, and retired to her husband.  Nor was this the only good fortune that befell Stephen; for before the year ended, the main prop and pillar of his enemies was taken away by death; this was Robert Earl of Gloucester, than whom there have been few private persons known in the world that deserve a fairer place and character in the registers of time, for his inviolable faith, disinterested friendship, indefatigable zeal, and firm constancy to the cause he espoused, and unparalleled generosity in the conduct thereof:  he adhered to his sister in all her fortunes, to the ruin of his own; he placed a crown on her head; and when she had lost it by her folly and perverseness refused the greatest offers from a victorious enemy, who had him in his power, and chose to continue a prisoner rather than recover his liberty by any hazard to her pretensions:  he bore up her sinking title in spite of her own frequent miscarriages, and at last died in her cause by a fever contracted with perpetual toils for her service.  An example fit to be shewn the world, although few perhaps are like to follow it; but however, a small tribute of praise, justly due to extraordinary virtue, may prove no ill expedient to encourage imitation.

[Footnote 38:  Gervase. [D.S.]]