string about their heads, and twisted it till it went into the brain.
They put them into dungeons wherein were adders and snakes and toads,
and thus wore them out. Some they put into a crucet-house, that is,
into a chest that was short and narrow and not deep, and they put
sharp stones in it, and crushed the man therein so that they broke all
his limbs. There were hateful and grim things called Sachenteges in
many of the castles, and which two or three men had enough to do to
carry. The Sachentege was made thus: it was fastened to a beam, having
a sharp iron to go round a man's throat and neck, so that he might
noways sit, nor lie, nor sleep, but that he must bear all the iron.
Many thousands they exhausted with hunger. I cannot, and I may not,
tell of all the wounds and all the tortures that they inflicted upon
the wretched men of this land; and this state of things lasted the
nineteen years that Stephen was king, and ever grew worse and worse.
They were continually levying an exaction from the towns, which they
called Tenserie,[18] and when the miserable inhabitants had no more to
give, then plundered they and burnt all the towns, so that well
mightest thou walk a whole day's journey nor ever shouldest thou find
a man seated in a town or its lands tilled."

[18] A payment to the superior lord for protection.

More than a thousand of these abodes of infamy are said to have been
built. Possibly many of them were timber structures only. Countless
small towns and villages boast of once possessing a fortress. The name
Castle Street remains, though the actual site of the stronghold has
long vanished. Sometimes we find a mound which seems to proclaim its
position, but memory is silent, and the people of England, if the
story of the chronicler be true, have to be grateful to Henry II, who
set himself to work to root up and destroy very many of these