22S 4N.VALS OF EOGEK BE UOVEDEX. A.D. 1136. bury, and many bishops and nobles, and there they buried king Henry with the respect due to a man so great. King Stephen proceeded thence to Oxford, where he repeated and confirmed the concessions which he had promised to make to God, the people, and the holy Church, on the day of his coronation, which were these : In the first place, he promised on oath that, on the death of bishops, he would never retain the sees in his own hand, but immediately consent to the election and invest them with bishops. Secondly, he promised on oath, that he would retain in his hand the woods of no clerk or layman, as king Henry had done, who had every year impleaded them, if they either took venison in their own woods, or rooted them up or thinned them to supply their own necessities : which kind of unjust impleading was carried to so annoying a length, that, if the supervisors set eye from a distance upon the wood of any person whom they deemed to be a moneyed man, they immediately obtained an injunction against waste thereon, whether it had suffered waste or not, in order that, by some means or other, they might be enabled to mulct him. In the third place, he promised on oath, that Danegelt, that is to say, two shillings on every hide of land, which his predecessors had been accustomed to receive yearly, he would give up for ever. These are the principal things which he promised on oath to God ; there were others besides; but none of these promises did he keep. In the meantime, while, at the close of the festival of the Nativity-, king Stephen was staying at Oxford, he received tidings which informed him to this effect : " David, king of the Scots, on pretence that he was coming with peaceful intent for the purpose of visiting you, has come to Carlisle and Newcastle, and stealthily taken possession of them both ;" to which king Stephen made answer ; " What he has taken by stealth, I will recover by victory ; " and thereupon, without delay, the king moved forward his army, which was so mighty, so valiant, and so numerous, that nono in England could be remembered bike it. However, king David met him in the neighbourhood of Durham, and, making a treaty with him, restored Newcastle, but retained Carlisle with the king's consent. David, however, did not do homage to king Stephen ; because he had previously, as the first of the laity, promised