This year went the King Stephen over sea to Normandy, and there was received; for that they concluded that he 
should be all such as the uncle was; and because he had got his treasure: but he dealed it out, and scattered it 
foolishly.  Much had King Henry gathered, gold and silver, but no good did men for his soul thereof.  When the King 
Stephen came to England, he held his council at Oxford; where he seized the Bishop Roger of Sarum, and
Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, and the chancellor Roger, his nephew; and threw all into prison till they gave up their
castles.  When the traitors understood that he was a mild man, and soft, and good, and no justice executed, then 
did they all wonder.  They had done him homage, and sworn oaths, but they no truth maintained.  They were all 
forsworn, and forgetful of their troth; for every rich man built his castles, which they held
against him: and they filled the land full of castles.  They cruelly oppressed the wretched men of the land with 
castle-works;and when the castles were made, they filled them with devils andevil men.  Then took they those whom 
they supposed to have any goods, both by night and by day, labouring men and women, and threw them into prison
for their gold and silver, and inflicted on them unutterable tortures; for never were any martyrs so tortured as they 
were.  Some they hanged up by the feet, and smoked them with foul smoke; and some by the thumbs, or by the
head, and hung coats of mail on their feet.  They tied knotted strings about their heads, and twisted them till the pain went to
the brains.  They put them into dungeons, wherein were adders, and snakes, and toads; and so destroyed them.  
Some they placed in a crucet-house; that is, in a chest that was short and narrow, and not deep; wherein they put 
sharp stones, and so thrust the man therein, that they broke all the limbs.  In many of the castles were things 
loathsome and grim, called "Sachenteges", of which two or three men had enough to bear one.  It was thus made:
that is, fastened to a beam; and they placed a sharp iron [collar] about the man's throat and neck, so that he could 
in no direction either sit, or lie, or sleep, but bear all that iron.

Many thousands they wore out with hunger.  I neither can, nor may I tell all the wounds and all the pains which they 
inflicted on wretched men in this land.  This lasted the nineteen winters while Stephen was king; and it grew 
continually worse and worse. They constantly laid guilds on the towns, and called it "tenserie"; and when the 
wretched men had no more to give, then they plundered and burned all the towns; that well thou mightest
go a whole day's journey and never shouldest thou find a man sitting in a town, nor the land tilled.  Then was corn 
dear, and flesh, and cheese, and butter; for none was there in the land. Wretched men starved of hunger.  Some 
had recourse to alms, who were for a while rich men, and some fled out of the land.  Never yet was there more 
wretchedness in the land; nor ever did heathen men worse than they did: for, after a time, they spared neither
church nor churchyard, but took all the goods that were therein, and then burned the church and all together.  
Neither did they spare a bishop's land, or an abbot's, or a priest's, but plundered both monks and clerks; and every 
man robbed another who could.  If two men, or three, came riding to a town, all the township fled for them, 
concluding them to be robbers.  The bishops and learned men cursed them continually, but the effect thereof was 
nothing to them; for they were all accursed, and forsworn, and abandoned.  To till the ground was to plough the
sea: the earth bare no corn, for the land was all laid waste by such deeds; and they said openly, that Christ slept, 
and his saints.  Such things, and more than we can say, suffered we nineteen winters for our sins.  

In all this evil time held Abbot Martin his abbacy twenty years and a half, and eight days, with much tribulation; and 
found the monks and the guests everything that behoved them; and held much charity in the house; and, 
notwithstanding all this, wrought on the church, and set thereto lands and rents, and enriched it very much, and 
bestowed vestments upon it.  And he brought them into the new minster on St. Peter's mass-day with much pomp; 
which was in the year, from the incarnation of our Lord, 1140, and in the twenty-third from the destruction of the 
place by fire.  And he went to Rome, and there was well received by the Pope Eugenius; from whom he obtained 
their privileges: -- one for all the lands of the abbey, and another for the lands that adjoin to the churchyard; and, if 
he might have lived longer, so he meant to do concerning the treasury.  And he got in the lands that rich men 
retained by main strength.  Of William Malduit, who held the castle of Rockingham, he won Cotingham and Easton; 
and of Hugh de Walteville, he won Hirtlingbury and Stanwick, and sixty shillings from Oldwinkle each year.  And he 
made many monks, and planted a vine-yard, and constructed many works, and made the town better than it was 
before.  He was a good monk, and a good man; and for this reason God and good men loved him.  Now we will relate
in part what happened in King Stephen's time.  In his reign the Jews of Norwich bought a Christian child before 
Easter, and tortured him after the same manner as our Lord was tortured; and on Long- Friday (164) hanged him on 
a rood, in mockery of our Lord, and afterwards buried him.  They supposed that it would be concealed, but our Lord 
showed that he was a holy martyr.  And the monks took him, and buried him with high honour in the minster.  And 
through our Lord he worketh wonderful and manifold miracles, and is called St. William.