excommunication was pronounced by name against the principal
barons--John still found that his nobility and people, and even his
clergy, adhered to the defence of their liberties and to their
combination against him; the sword of his foreign mercenaries was all
he had to trust to for restoring his authority.

The barons, after obtaining the Great Charter, seem to have been
lulled into a fatal security, and to have taken no rational measures,
in case of the introduction of a foreign force, for reassembling their
armies. The King was, from the first, master of the field, and
immediately laid siege to the castle of Rochester, which was
obstinately defended by William de Albiney, at the head of a hundred
and forty knights with their retainers, but was at last reduced by
famine. John, irritated with the resistance, intended to have hanged
the governor and all the garrison; but on the representation of
William de Mauleon, who suggested to him the danger of reprisals, he
was content to sacrifice, in this barbarous manner, the inferior
prisoners only. The captivity of William de Albiney, the best officer
among the confederated barons, was an irreparable loss to their cause;
and no regular opposition was thenceforth made to the progress of the
royal arms. The ravenous and barbarous mercenaries, incited by a cruel
and enraged prince, were let loose against the estates, tenants,
manors, houses, parks of the barons, and spread devastation over the
face of the kingdom.

Nothing was to be seen but the flames of villages, and castles reduced
to ashes, the consternation and misery of the inhabitants, tortures
exercised by the soldiery to make them reveal their concealed
treasures, and reprisals no less barbarous, committed by the barons
and their partisans on the royal demesnes, and on the estates of such