42 pages • 1 hour read
Ken FollettThe Pillars of the Earth
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 8-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8
The year is 1140. Civil war has been ongoing between King Stephen and Empress Maud for a year, and William Hamleigh has been commanding men in the war on King Stephen’s side. He has become more sadistic in the intervening years. While at a brothel, he receives word that his father Percy has died. Returning to court, William discovers that Richard, the son of Earl Bartholemew, has made a credible case to King Stephen for a right to the earldom. Richard and Aliena are now wealthy from their wool trade, and with Aliena’s money, Richard has become a squire. Meanwhile, the earldom has gone to seed under the Hamleighs’ watch. William performs acts of murder and rape within his earldom in order to spread fear and extract back rent and fines. On this rampage, he discovers that Kingsbridge is thriving at the expense of the impoverished Shiring, and that both Richard and Aliena are not so easy to intimidate.
Seeking absolution for his sins from Bishop Walerian, the two hatch a plan to retake the Shiring quarry by force. In a dawn raid he is met with unexpected force by Otto and his stonecutters. William is victorious, but he loses a few of his best men at arms in the fight. “What the devil did they think they were fighting for?” asks a bewildered William (479).
Chapter 9
Philip travels to court with young Richard to appeal to the king for the right to hold a market in Shiring and to retain rights to the stolen quarry. They meet in the town of Lincoln during a standoff with an opposing army. Philip makes an impassioned case to the king, but is interrupted by William, who arrives with 200 extra men to match the forces arrayed against them. Philip understands that this decisively undercuts his plea.
Stephen’s army loses the ensuing battle, and the king is captured. William Hamleigh and his remaining men run from the battle. In the ensuing fracas in town, Philip is captured for ransom. Bishop Henry arrives, now aligned against Stephen with Empress Maud. Philip is delighted to find Francis, his brother, in Henry’s company. Philip is freed at once.
Two months later, William has pledged himself to Maud and Walerian’s urging, and a meeting of bishops and religious leaders is called to the new empress’s court. She decides to give the quarry to the Hamleighs but the rights to a market to Kingsbridge. She charges the tremendous sum of 100 pounds for the right to the market. Philip marvels “[…] how a clear case of injustice could come to seem evenly balanced when argued at court” (520). Philip goes to Aliena, now wealthy from her successful trade, for a loan on next year’s wool, to which she charitably agrees. Philip decides to further profit his own market by planning a fleece fair in Kingsbridge the next year, a move certain to anger the Hamleighs.
Chapter 10
Six months later, the town of Kingsbridge is thriving. The cathedral building continues. Jack performs brilliantly but erratically as a builder under Tom’s watch. Obsessed and in love, he follows Aliena into the forest one day and they discover a shared interest in literature. She is delighted to learn that Jack can recite poetry from memory.
Aliena continues to turn her ingenuity toward enterprise and decides to produce cloth from her great excess of wool. With Alfred, who is a serviceable builder under his father, she hatches a plan to start a guild to construct a small parishioner’s church in town. During the guild meeting, the oafish Alfred proposes to her, and she flatly refuses him.
Philip suggests to Tom that Jack would make a good monk, but Ellen is furiously against the idea. “Those treacherous lying priests took his father but they’re not taking him,” she declares (550). Jack insists that he would like to remain a builder. Jack invents an ingenious machine to do felting for Aliena, and she recognizes her desire for him. They share a kiss, but the jealousy it arouses in Alfred forces her to stay away from the family for a while.
The deposed King Stephen is released from prison and declares a new war on Empress Maud, again throwing Philip’s plans into uncertainty. Richard declares himself on Stephen’s side and goes to war.
Alfred does some research and discovers the truth about Jack’s father being a thief. Alfred confronts Jack with the news, and they get into a furious fistfight, during which they burn down the mason's building. As punishment for this fight, Jack is brought into the priory to assist in planning the cathedral, thus taking up monastic training as Philip suggested.
On the day of the Kingsbridge fleece fair, William Hamleigh attacks with a group of men. They burn the town and along with it a store of wool that represents the bulk of Aliena’s wealth. In the resulting massacre, over a hundred people are killed, and Tom Builder is kicked by a horse in the head and dies.
Chapters 8-10 Analysis
Follett takes us deep into the tumult of the historical period known as the Anarchy. The battle of Lincoln happens entirely “offscreen,” however, and there are no great battle scenes, only the build-up to the battle and the subsequent consequences. All parties remain self-interested, and the war is depicted as a petty squabble among royals who would be better served by solving their differences politically. As a leader of his church, Philip will continually face the problem of taking two steps back for every step forward, and the battle of Lincoln is no exception. He pleads; he bravely risks his life; he is captured; then he is freed by his brother in a random twist of fate. Even with his brother’s influence with the victorious Maud, however, Philip’s adventures bring him closer to his goal by mere inches or not at all. Within the tumult of the Anarchy, all good ideas and faithful intentions are washed away.
A reader might pause to wonder how Aliena, a woman with no previous experience or connections, did so well in such a well-established field of trade. In the end, however, her fate is no different than Philip’s. In a world in which law can be written and unwritten by royal writ, property and ingenuity mean very little. Aliena begins this section wealthy and capable of partially fulfilling her father’s dying wish by appointing the lazy Richard with knightly accoutrements and a retinue. She ends it with all her worldly possessions burned in a fire, back to square one. Jack is similarly subject to the capriciousness of fate, in that the fight between Jack and Alfred that might have caused his social and economic destruction actually brings him safely under Philip’s care. Tom, on the other hand, suffers a sudden tragic accident and dies, showing that average citizens in this time period had very little control over their life’s direction.
The engine of all this melodrama is William. His (largely unexplained) ability to muster men to his side means that, when the laws inevitably get rewritten or ignored, his physical force will wind up in favor. Follett suggests that, in normal times, the force of William’s atrocities would be condemned. In the Anarchy, however, William is free to attack whom he will as his impulse guides him, with the consequence being destruction and failure for all.
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