M.Paris, p.

53,] [***** W.Malms, p 183.] [****** W.Malms p 183.] While this quarrel, joined to so many other grievances, increased the discontents among the people, the empress, invited by the opportunity, and secretly encouraged by the legate himself, landed in England, with Robert, earl of Glocester, and a retinue of a hundred and forty knights.
She fixed her residence at Arundel Castle, whose gates were opened to her by Adelais, the queen dowager, now married to William de Albini, earl of Sussex; and she excited, by messengers, her partisans to take arms in every county of England.

Adelais, who had expected that her daughter-in-law would have invaded the kingdom with a much greater force, became apprehensive of danger; and Matilda, to ease her of her fears, removed first to Bristol, which belonged to her brother Robert, thence to Glocester, where she remained under the protection of Milo, a gallant nobleman in those parts, who had embraced her cause.

Soon after, Geoffrey Talbot, William Mohun, Ralph Lovell, William Fitz-John, William Fitz-Alan, Paganell, and many other barons, declared for her; and her party, which was generally favored in the kingdom, seemed every day to gain ground upon that of her antagonist.
Were we to relate all the military events transmitted to us by contemporary and authentic historians, it would be easy to swell our accounts of this reign into a large volume; but those incidents, so little memorable in themselves, and so confused both in time and place, could afford neither instruction nor entertainment to the reader.

It suffices to say, that the war was spread into every quarter; and that those turbulent barons, who had already shaken off, in a great measure, the restraint of government, having now obtained the pretence of a public cause, carried on their devastations with redoubled fury, exercised implacable vengeance on each other, and set no bounds to their oppressions over the people.