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Exeter’s lord, Brian de Redvers, was one of the very few who had not come to swear fealty and do homage to the king at the great Easter court of 1136. Although Stephen had pleasantly and without penalty pardoned those who had failed to come when summoned to his coronation in December 1135, he had made it clear he expected all to attend him at Easter. In the end, even Robert of Gloucester, Empress Matilda’s half brother, had done homage. After Stephen had ordered Redvers to yield up the royal keep at Exeter, Redvers had offered to do homage but Stephen refused, delighted to have one man he could defeat and hold up as an example of the fruit of rebellion.
    It is pointless now, so many years later, to describe the foolish mistakes made at Exeter. All I need say is that Robert of Gloucester’s influence caused King Stephen to offer too-generous terms to Redvers to yield his keep. This caused a bitter quarrel between Stephen and his brother, the bishop of Winchester, during which the bishop said the one thing Stephen could not forgive—that he was like his father, a coward. In addition, I think the fact that the king seemed so fearful of offending Gloucester started William of Ypres thinking of being rid of Lord Robert once and for all, and that led to Ypres’s attempt to assassinate Gloucester, which in the end caused the loss of Normandy.
    I am sure that the king blamed the failure of our campaign in Normandy on Ypres and that Waleran de Meulan kept green both that memory and the insult Winchester had uttered. I did not like the strength of Waleran’s influence. He was a fine soldier, but I could not forget how he had betrayed King Henry and he was too ambitious, too single-minded about his own advantage. I know that most of those who surrounded the king thought primarily of their own fortunes—and I, to my shame, was as guilty as any other—but Waleran was both short-sighted and arrogant, which often made his advice dangerous. However, I think it was Waleran who convinced Stephen to return to England to prepare a defense of the northern shires against a new invasion by the Scots.
    He may have guessed the king would not be free to go himself and wished to defeat the Scots to raise himself still further in Stephen’s esteem. The king had appointed Queen Maud as regent, but Waleran had no great opinion of women and may have assumed—what never occurred to me—that Roger, bishop of Salisbury, the king’s justiciar, and the other high officials would ignore her and hold for the king’s return all the business they dared not complete themselves.
    Salisbury was well able to rule the nation for he had acted as regent for King Henry, but Stephen never had the same trust in him—I suppose because the bishop had been Henry’s man and Stephen feared Salisbury hid a secret leaning to Matilda. And ignoring Maud as he did, which was made plain from the amount of business Salisbury had to present, angered the king. Stephen had all my sympathy. I too felt it was wrong for him to be bound to Westminster when he should be marching north to meet King David’s offensive.
    No loss came of Salisbury’s insistence that Stephen attend to the acts and grants that had been pending for months. Waleran took the footmen of the king’s army west into Cumbria and drove the Scots east into the arms of the Northumbrian barons, who did not love them. The king intended to follow in a few days with the mounted troops, but it was actually closer to three weeks before we were able to leave.
    Fortunately there was little need for us as a fighting force. Waleran’s swift advance through Cumbria forestalled any invasion or rebellion in that shire. When we met Waleran’s army in southern Scotland, we learned that he had relieved a siege at Wark, discovering among those killed and taken prisoner a number of men from Cumbria. That was enough for Stephen. Their service to David against him,