{1143.} This expedient, however, produced nothing decisive.

Stephen took Oxford after a long siege: he was defeated by Earl Robert at Wilton; and the empress, though of a masculine spirit, yet being harassed with a variety of good and bad fortune, and alarmed with continual dangers to her person and family, at last retired into Normandy, {1146.} whither she had sent her son some time before.

The death of her brother, which happened nearly about the same time, would have proved fatal to her interests, hail not some incidents occurred which checked the course of Stephen's prosperity.

This prince, finding that the castles built by the noblemen of his own party encouraged the spirit of independence, and were little less dangerous than those which remained in the hands of the enemy, endeavored to extort from them a surrender of those fortresses and he alienated the affections of many of them by this equitable demand.

The artillery, also, of the church, which his brother had brought over to his side, had, after some interval, joined the other party.