STEPHEN AND MATILDA.
Accession of Stephen--Arrest of the Bishops--Election of Matilda--The
Anarchy--The Pacification.
[Sidenote:
Results of
the Norman
rule.
]
The English had had hard times under the Conqueror and his sons, but
they had learned a great lesson; they had learned that they were one
people. The Normans too, the great nobles who had divided the land,
and hoped to create little monarchies of their own in every county and
manor, had had hard times. Confiscation, mutilation, exile, death had
come heavily upon them. They also had had a lesson to learn, to rid
themselves of personal and selfish aims, to consolidate a powerful
state under a king of their own race, and to content themselves as
servants of the law with the substantial enjoyment of powers which they
found themselves too weak to wrest out of the hands of the king, the
supreme lawgiver and administrator of the law. This lesson they had
not learned. They had submitted with an ill grace to the strong rule
of the king’s ministers, the men whom they had taught to guard against
their attempts at usurpation. Hence throughout these reigns the Norman
king and the English people had been thrown together. They soon learned
that they had common aims, finding themselves constantly in array
against a common enemy. Hence, too, the English had already an earnest
of the final victory. They grew whilst their adversaries wasted. The
successive generations of the Normans found their wiser sons learning
to call themselves English, while those who would not learn English
ways declined in number and strength from year to year.
[Sidenote:
Alliance
of king and
people.
]
The Conqueror in a measure, and Henry I. with more clearness, perceived
this, and foresaw the result. They were careful not only to call
themselves English kings, but nominally at least to maintain English
customs, and to rule by English laws. One by one the great houses which
furnished rivals to their power dropped before them, and Henry I. at
the close of his reign was so strong that, had it not been for the
fact that he had by habit and routine made himself a law to himself,
he might easily have played the part of a tyrant. But the forces which
he and his father had so sturdily repressed were not extinguished; nor
was the administrative system, by which they at once maintained the
rights of the English and kept their own grasp of power, sufficiently
consolidated to stand steadily when the hands that had reared it were
taken away.
[Sidenote:
Question of
succession.
]
This also, it may seem probable, Henry I. distinctly saw. It was to
his apprehensions on this account that for years before his death he
was busily employed in securing the succession by every possible means
to his own children. The feeling which led him to do so is not quite
capable of simple analysis. He had no great love for his daughter, the
empress Matilda; what paternal affection he had to lavish had been
spent on his son William, whose death was no doubt the trouble that
went nearest to his heart. We cannot suppose that he cared much for
the people whom, although they had delivered him more than once in
the most trying times, he never scrupled, when it suited his purpose,
to treat as slaves. It would almost seem as if he felt that, unless
he could anticipate the continuance of power in the hands of his
daughter and her offspring, his own tenure of it for the present would
be incomplete, and the great glory of the sons of Rollo would suffer
diminution in his hands.
[Sidenote:
Precautions
taken by
Henry I.
]
Three times, therefore, by the most solemn oaths, he had tried to
secure the adherence of the nation to her and to her son. Vast
assemblies had been held, attended by Normans and English alike. Earl
Stephen and earl Robert had vied with one another as to who should
take the first oath of homage; the concurrence of the Church had been
promised and, so far as gratitude and a sense of interest as well as
duty could go, had been secured. But all this had been insufficient to
stay Henry’s misgivings. At the time of his death he had been already
four years in Normandy striving to keep peace between Matilda and her
husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, between the Normans and the Angevins, and
to consolidate his hold on the duchy, which had at last, since the
death of his nephew and brother, become indisputably his own. His
sudden death occurred in the midst of these designs. It was said and
sworn to by his steward, Hugh Bigot, a man whose later career adds
little to his authority as a witness, that just before his death,
provoked by her perverseness, he had disinherited his daughter. It may
have been so; the threat of disinheritance may have been a menace which
his unexpected death gave him no time to recall. But the very report
was enough. He died on December 1, 1135; and from that moment the
succession was treated as an open question, to be discussed by Normans
and Englishmen, together or apart, as they pleased.
[Sidenote:
Who were
the competitors?
]
[Sidenote:
Stephen of
Blois.
]
We may if we choose speculate on the motives that swayed the great
men. No doubt the pure Norman nobles would gladly have set aside
altogether the descendants of Harlotta; all the Normans together would
have refused the rule of Geoffrey of Anjou. A new duke, if they must
have a duke, might be chosen from the house of Champagne, from among
the sons of Adela, the Conqueror’s greatest and most famous daughter;
Count Theobald was the reigning count, but he was not the eldest son,
and as his elder brother had been set aside so might he. Stephen, the
next brother, the Count of Mortain and Boulogne, and first baron of
Normandy, had already his footing in the land. His wife too was of
English descent. Her mother was sister to the good queen of Henry I.,
and whatever the old king had hoped to gain by his blood connection
with his subjects, Stephen might gain by his wife. Stephen was a brave
man, too, and he had as yet made no enemies.
[Sidenote:
Stephen’s
arrival in
England.
]
But his success, such as it was, was due to his own promptness. He had,
as count of Boulogne, the command of the shortest passage to England.
Whilst the Normans were discussing the merits of his brother Theobald,
he took on himself to be his own messenger. He remembered how his uncle
had won the crown and treasure of William Rufus; he left the Norman
lords to look after the funeral of their dead lord and sailed for Kent;
at Dover and at Canterbury he was received with sullen silence. The
men of Kent had no love for the stranger who came, as his predecessor
Eustace had done, to trouble the land; on he went to London, and there
he learned that the same prejudice which existed in Normandy against
the Angevins was in full force. “We will not have,” the Londoners said,
“a stranger to rule over us;” though how Stephen of Champagne was more
a stranger than Geoffrey of Anjou it is not easy to see. Anyhow, as
nothing succeeds like success, nothing is so potent to secure the name
of king as the wearing of the crown. So Stephen went on to Winchester,
and there secured the crown and treasure. In little more than three
weeks he had come again to London and claimed the crown as the elect of
the nation.
[Sidenote:
Election of
Stephen
and coronation.
]
The assembly which saw the coronation and did homage on St. Stephen’s
day was but a poor substitute for the great councils which had attended
the summons of William and Henry, and in which Stephen, as a subject,
had played a leading part. There was his brother Henry of Winchester,
the skilled and politic churchman, who was willing enough to be a
king’s brother if he might build up ecclesiastical supremacy through
him; there was Archbishop William of Corbeuil, who had undertaken
by the most solemn obligations to support Matilda, and who knew
that his prerogative vote might decide the contest against Stephen,
although it could not restore the chances of peace; there was Roger
of Salisbury, the late king’s prime minister, the master builder of
the constitutional fabric, undecided between duty and the desire of
retaining power. Very few of the barons were there; Hugh Bigot, indeed,
with his convenient oath, and a few more whose complicity with Stephen
had already thrown them on him as a sole chance of safety. The rest of
the great men present were the citizens of London, Norman barons of
a sort, foreign merchants, some few rich Englishmen: all of them men
who were used to public business, who knew how Henry I. had held his
courts, who believed confidently in force and money. They had first
encouraged Stephen from fear of Geoffrey; and more or less they held
to Stephen as long as he lived. These men constituted the witenagemot
that chose him king, and overruled the scruples of the inconstant
archbishop. They took upon them to represent the nation that should
ratify the election of a new king with their applause.
[Sidenote:
First charter
of Stephen.
]
Henry I. was not yet in his grave; but all promises made to him
were forgotten. With what seems a sort of irony, Stephen issued as
his coronation charter a simple promise to observe and compel the
observance of all the good laws and good customs of his uncle.
The news of the great event traveled rapidly. Count Theobald, vexed and
disappointed as he was, refused to contest the crown which his brother
already wore; Geoffrey and Matilda were quarrelling with their own
subjects in Anjou; and Robert of Gloucester, who hated Stephen more
than he loved Matilda, saw that he must bide his time. Some crisis
must soon occur; he knew that Stephen would soon spend his treasure
and break his promises. Meanwhile the old king must be buried like a
king; and the great lords came over with the corpse to Reading where he
had built his last resting-place. There Stephen met them, within the
twelve days of Christmas; and after the funeral, at Oxford or somewhere
in the neighborhood, he arranged terms with them; terms by which he
endeavored, amplifying the words of his charter, to catch the good-will
of each class of his subjects. To the clergy he promised relief from
the exactions of the late reign and freedom of election; to the barons
he promised a relaxation of the forest law, the execution of which had
been hardened and sharpened by Henry I.; and to the people he promised
the abolition of danegeld. “These things chiefly and other things
besides he vowed to God,” says Henry of Huntingdon, “but he kept none
of them.” The promises were perhaps not insincere at the time; anyhow
they had the desired effect, and united the nation for the moment.
[Sidenote:
First invasion
by the Scots.
]
The king by this means got time to hasten into the North, where King
David of Scots, the uncle of the empress, had invaded the country in
her name. The two kings met at Durham. David had taken Newcastle and
Carlisle; Newcastle he surrendered, Carlisle Stephen left in his hands
as a bribe for neutrality. It was too much for David, who, although
a good king, was a Scot. He agreed to make peace: but he had sworn
fealty to his niece: he could not become Stephen’s man. His son Henry,
however, might bear the burden; so Henry swore and Stephen sealed the
bargain with the gift of Huntingdon, part of the inheritance of Henry’s
mother, the daughter of Waltheof, the last of the English earls. Then
Stephen went back to London and so to Oxford. There he published a new
charter, intended to comprise the new promises of good government.
[Sidenote:
Second charter
of Stephen.
]
This was done soon after Easter, and, as the name of earl Robert of
Gloucester is found among the witnesses, it is clear that he had
submitted; but the oath which he took to Stephen was a conditional one,
more like that of a rival potentate than of a dependent; he would be
faithful to the king so long as the king should preserve to him his
rights and dignities. This was no slight concession, made by Robert,
doubtless because he saw that his sister’s cause was hopeless; but it
was no slight obligation for Stephen to undertake. Robert had great
feudal domains in England, and all the personal friends of his father
and sister were at his beck. Stephen might have been safer with him as
a declared enemy. But for the moment there was peace.
The charter, published at Oxford, promised good government very
circumstantially; the abuses of the Church, of the forests, and of the
sheriffs, were all to be remedied. But the enactments made were not
nearly so clear or circumstantial as the promises made at the late
king’s funeral.
[Sidenote:
Rebellion
of 1136.
]
The first cloud, and it was a very little one, arose soon after. Before
Whitsuntide Stephen was taken ill, and a rumor went forth that he was
dead. The Norman rage for treason began to ferment. Hugh Bigot, the
lord of Norwich, was the first to take up arms; Baldwin of Redvers,
the greatest lord in Devonshire, followed. But the king recovered as
quickly as he had sickened. He took Norwich and Exeter, but--deserting
thus the uniform policy of his predecessors--spared the traitors.
Cheered by this measure of success, he immediately broke the second of
his constitutional promises, holding a great court of inquiry into the
forests, and impleading and punishing at his pleasure.
[Sidenote:
Beginning
of troubles.
]
[Sidenote:
Second
invasion by
the Scots,
in 1138.
]
[Sidenote:
Battle of
the Standard.
]
The year 1136 affords little more of interest; the year 1137 was spent
in securing Normandy, which Geoffrey and Matilda were unable to hold
against him, and in forming a close alliance with France. When he
returned, just before Christmas, he had spent nearly all his money,
and the evil day was not far off. Rebellion was again threatening, and
a mighty dark cloud had for the second time arisen in the North. We
are not told by the historians exactly whether the king’s misrule made
the opening for the revolt, or the revolt forced him into misrule.
Possibly the two evils waxed worse and worse together; for neither
party trusted the other, and under the circumstances every precaution
wore the look of aggression. Stephen was to the last degree impolitic;
and to say that is to allow that he was more than half dishonest. Still
he had the great majority of the people on his side. A premature but
general rebellion in the early months of 1138 was crushed in detail.
Castle after castle was taken; but Robert of Gloucester had now
declared himself, and King David, seeing Stephen busily employed in the
South, invaded Yorkshire. It was a great struggle, but the Yorkshiremen
were equal to the trial. Whether or not they loved Stephen they hated
the Scots. The great barons who were on the king’s side did their part;
the ancient standards of the northern churches, of St. Peter of York,
St. Wilfrid of Ripon, and St. John of Beverley, were hoisted, and
all men flew to them. The old archbishop Thurstan, who had struggled
victoriously twenty years before against King Henry and the archbishop
of Canterbury to boot, sent his suffragan to preach the national cause.
Not only the knights with their men-at-arms, but the husbandmen, with
their sons and servants, the old Anglo-Saxon militia, the parish
priests at the head of their parishioners, streamed forth over hill and
plain, and in the Battle of the Standard, as it was called, they beat
the Scots at Cowton Moor with such completeness that the rebellion came
to nothing in consequence.
[Sidenote:
Stephen’s
imprudent
policy.
]
[Sidenote:
His
new
earls.
]
[Sidenote:
Coinage
debased.
]
[Sidenote:
Mercenaries
imported.
]
Stephen felt no small addition of strength from this victory, but he
was nearer the end of his treasure and the days of peace were over.
Without money it is hard to act like a statesman; the difficulties
were too strong for Stephen’s gratitude and good faith. Yet he began
his misrule not without some method. The power of Robert of Gloucester
lay chiefly in his influence with the great earls who represented the
families of the Conquest. Stephen also would have a court of great
earls, but in trying to make himself friends he raised up persistent
enemies. He raised new men to new earldoms, but as he had no spare
domains to bestow, he endowed them with pensions charged on the
Exchequer: thus impairing the crown revenue at the moment that his
personal authority was becoming endangered. To refill the treasury he
next debased the coinage. To recruit his military power, diminished by
the rebellion, and by the fact that the weakness of his administration
was letting the county organization fall into decay, he called in
Fleming mercenaries. The very means that he took to strengthen his
position ruined him. The mercenaries alienated the people: the debased
coinage destroyed the confidence of the merchants and the towns: the
new and unsubstantial earldoms provoked the real earls to further
hostility; and the newly created lords demanded of the king new
privileges as the reward and security for their continued services.
[Sidenote:
Breach with
the clergy.
]
Still the clergy were faithful; and the clergy were very powerful;
they conducted the mechanism of government, they filled the national
councils; they were rich too, and earnest in the preservation of peace.
With Henry of Winchester his brother, Roger of Salisbury his chief
minister, Theobald of Canterbury his nominee, he might still flourish.
The Church at all events was sure to outlive the barons. With almost
incredible imprudence Stephen contrived to throw the clergy into
opposition, and by one fell stroke to break up all the administrative
machinery of the realm. It may be that he was growing suspicious, or
jealous: it is more probable that he acted under foolish advice. Anyhow
he did it.
[Sidenote:
Roger of
Salisbury.
]
Roger of Salisbury, the great justiciar of Henry I., was now an old
man. He had contributed more perhaps than any other to set Stephen on
the throne, and had not only first placed in his hands the sinews of
war, but had maintained the revenue of the crown by maintaining the
administration of justice and finance. He had not served for naught.
He had got his son made chancellor; two of his nephews were bishops,
one of them treasurer of the king as well. He had no humble idea of his
own position: he had built castles the like of which for strength and
beauty were not found north of the Alps. He had perhaps some intention
of holding back when the struggle came and of turning the scale at the
last moment as seemed him best, an intention which he shared with the
chief of his brethren; for Henry of Winchester, although the king’s
brother, was before all things a churchman; and Theobald of Canterbury,
although he owed his place either to the good-will or to the connivance
of Stephen, was consistently and more or less actively a faithful
adherent to Matilda and her son.
[Sidenote:
Arrest of
the bishops,
1139.
]
How much Stephen knew of the designs of the bishops we know not, what
he suspected we can only suspect: but the result was unmistakable.
He tried a surprise that turned to his own discomfiture. He arrested
bishop Roger and his nephew, Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, and
compelled them to resign the castles which he pretended to think they
were fortifying against him. At once the church was in arms: sacrilege
and impiety determined even Henry of Winchester, who in 1139 became
legate of the see of Rome, against his brother.
[Sidenote:
The Empress
Matilda
arrives.
]
This would have been hard enough to bear, as many far stronger kings
than Stephen had learnt and were to learn to their cost. But the very
men on whom his violence had fallen were his own ministers, justiciar,
chancellor, and treasurer. The Church was in danger, the ministers
were in prison: justice, taxation, police, everything else was in
abeyance; and just at the right time the empress landed. At Christmas
1139 the whole game was up: the land was divided, the empress had the
west, Stephen the east; the Church was in secession from the State.
Roger died broken-hearted. Henry was negotiating with the empress.
The administration had come to naught, there were no courts of law,
no revenue, no councils of the realm. There was not even strength for
an honest open civil war. The year 1140 is filled with a mere record
of anarchy. At the court at Whitsuntide only one bishop attended and
he was a foreigner. Stephen we see now obdurate, now penitent; now
energetic, now despondent; the barons selling their services for new
promises from each side.
[Sidenote:
Beginning
of anarchy.
]
It is now that the period begins which William of Newburgh likens to
the days when there was no king in Israel, but every man did what was
right in his own eyes, nay, not what was right, but what was wrong
also, for every lord was king and tyrant in his own house. Castles
innumerable sprang up, and as fast as they were built they were filled
with devils; each lord judged and taxed and coined. The feudal spirit
of disintegration had for once its full play. Even party union was at
an end, and every baron fought on his own behalf. Feudalism had its
day, and the completeness of its triumph ensured its fall.
[Sidenote:
Stephen taken
prisoner, 1141.
]
[Sidenote:
Election of
Matilda.
]
All this was not realized at once. The new year 1141 found Stephen
besieging Lincoln, which was defended by Ranulf, earl of Chester, and
Robert of Gloucester. Stephen had not yet been defeated in the field,
and he had still by his side a considerable body of barons, though none
so great as the almost independent earl whom he was attacking. Now,
however, he was outmatched or out-generaled. After a struggle marked
chiefly by his own valiant exploits he was taken prisoner, and sent to
the empress by her brother as a great prize. The battle of Lincoln was
fought on February 2, and a week after Easter, in a great council of
bishops, barons, and abbots, Matilda, the empress of the Romans, was
elected Lady of England at Winchester. This assembly was, it must be
allowed, mainly clerical; but there is no doubt that it represented
the wishes of a great part of the barons, who, so far as they were
willing to have a king or queen at all, preferred Matilda to Stephen.
Henry of Winchester, however, took advantage of the opportunity to make
somewhat extravagant claims on behalf of his order, declaring that the
clergy had the right to elect the sovereign, and actually carrying
out the ceremony of election. The citizens of London pleaded hard
for the release of Stephen, whom they, six years before, had elected
with scarcely less audacious assumption, but in vain. Henry was now
at the crest of the wave, and he saw the triumph of the Church in the
humiliation of his brother. War was the great trial by combat ordained
between kings. Stephen had failed in that ordeal; judgment of God was
declared against him; like Saul he was found wanting.
[Sidenote:
Purpose of
the barons.
]
So Matilda became the Lady of the English; she was not crowned, because
perhaps the solemn consecration which she had received as empress
sufficed, or perhaps Stephen’s royalty was so far forth indefeasible;
but she acted as full sovereign nevertheless, executed charters,
bestowed lands and titles, and exerted power sufficient to show that
she had all the pride and tyrannical intolerance of her father, without
his prudence or self-control. She, too, was on the crest of her wave
and had her little day. But the barons looked coolly on the triumph;
it was their policy that neither competitor should destroy the other,
but that both should grow weaker and weaker, and so leave room for
each several feudatory to grow stronger and stronger. Neither king nor
empress had anything like command of his or her friends, or anything
like general acceptance.
[Sidenote:
Matilda’s
imprudent
rule.
]
Stephen’s fortunes reached their lowest depth when the Londoners a
few days before Midsummer received the empress as their sovereign.
She had no sooner achieved success than she began to alienate the
friends who had won it for her. The bishop of Winchester, although he
had not scrupled to sacrifice his brother’s title to the exigencies
of his policy, bore no grudge against the queen and her children,
and endeavored to prevail on the empress to guarantee to the latter
at least their mother’s inheritance. Matilda would be satisfied with
nothing less than the utter ruin of the rival house, and although the
queen was raising a great army in Kent for Stephen’s liberation, she
refused even to temporize. Henry in disgust retired from court and took
up his residence at Winchester; thither the empress, having in vain
attempted to recall him to her side, and having made London too hot
to hold her, followed him, and established herself in the royal castle
as he had done in the episcopal palace. Winchester thus witnessed the
gathering of the two hosts for a new struggle.
[Sidenote:
The earl of
Gloucester
taken
prisoner.
]
[Sidenote:
Exchange
of prisoners.
]
The queen brought up her army from Kent, the king of Scots and the earl
of Gloucester brought up their forces from the north and west. But the
queen showed the most promptitude. The baronage who were not bound to
the legate’s policy refused to complete the king’s ruin, and stood
aloof, intending to profit by the common weakness of the competitors.
In attempting to secure the empress’s retreat to Devizes, on September
14, the earl of Gloucester was taken prisoner, and the two parties from
this time forward played with more equal chances. An exchange of the
two great captives was at once proposed, but mutual distrust, and the
desire on both sides to take the utmost advantage of their situation,
delayed the negotiation for six weeks. Stephen at Bristol, Robert at
Rochester, must have watched the debate with longing eyes. The countess
Mabilia of Gloucester was prepared to ship Stephen off to Ireland,
if a hair of Robert’s head were injured; the queen demanded no less
security for her husband’s safety. At last, on All Saints’ Day, both
were released, each leaving security in the hands of the other that the
terms should be fairly observed.
As soon as they were free they both prepared for a continuance of the
struggle. The empress fixed her court again at Oxford; Stephen, who
seems at once to have resumed his royal position, the claims founded
by the election of the empress suffering a practical refutation by his
release, re-entered London. The legate, still desiring to direct the
storm, called a council at Westminster in December, where he apologized
for his conduct rather than defended it, and where the king laid a
formal complaint against the treason of the men who had taken and
imprisoned him. But the time for open hostilities was deferred, the
certain exhaustion which after a few months more renders the history
an absolute blank, was beginning to tell. Six months passed without a
sign. By Easter the empress had determined to send for her husband.
Geoffrey would not obey his wife’s summons until he had earl Robert’s
personal assurance that he should not be made a fool of. Earl Robert
went to persuade his brother-in-law to throw his sword into the scale.
Geoffrey determined first to secure Normandy, and kept the earl at work
there until the news from England peremptorily recalled him.
[Sidenote:
Success of
Stephen in
1142.
]
[Sidenote:
The
kingdom
divided.
]
Stephen had waited until Robert had left England, and then, emerging
from his sick room, had pounced down upon Wareham, the strong castle
which the earl had entrusted to his son, had taken it, and then
hastening northwards, had burnt the town of Oxford, and shut up the
empress in the castle. There she remained until her brother could
succor her. He returned at once, recovered Wareham and some castles in
Dorset, and called together the forces of his party at Cirencester. But
the winter was now advancing; the empress contrived a romantic escape
in the snow from Oxford, and before active war could be resumed she
directed that the castle should be surrendered. So the year 1142 comes
to an end, and we see the two parties resting in their exhaustion.
The western shires acknowledged Matilda, who reigned at Gloucester;
the eastern acknowledged Stephen, who made Kent his head quarters.
The midland counties were the seat of languid warfare, partly carried
on about Oxford, which was a central debating ground between the two
competitors, partly in Lincolnshire and Essex, where Stephen had to
keep in order those great nobles who aimed at independence. Geoffrey de
Mandeville, the earl of Essex, who accepted his earldom from both the
courts, employed him chiefly in 1143 and 1144. The earl of Chester, who
was uniformly opposed to Stephen, but who no doubt fought for himself
far more than for the empress, held Lincoln as a constant thorn in the
royal side. In 1145 Oxfordshire and Berkshire were the seat of war; in
1146 Stephen surprised the earl of Chester at Northampton and compelled
him to give up Lincoln, and now for the first time seems to have
thought himself a king. In despite of all precedent and all prejudice,
defying a superstition to which even Henry II. thought it wise to bow,
that no king should wear his crown within the walls of Lincoln, he wore
his crown there on Christmas Day.
[Sidenote:
Period of
anarchy.
]
In passing thus rapidly over these years we are but following the
example of our historians, who share in the exhaustion of the
combatants, recording little but an occasional affray, and a complaint
of general misery. Neither side had strength to keep down its friends,
much less to encounter its enemies. The price of the support given
to both was the same--absolute license to build castles, to practice
private war, to hang their private enemies, to plunder their neighbors,
to coin their money, to exercise their petty tyrannies as they pleased.
England was dismembered. North of the Tees ruled the king of Scots,
David the lawgiver and the church builder, under whose rule Cumberland,
Westmoreland and Northumberland were safe; the bishopric of Durham,
too, under his wing, had peace. The West of England, as we have seen,
was under the earl of Gloucester, who in his sister’s name founded
earldoms, and endeavored to concentrate in the hands of his supporters
such vestiges of the administrative organization as still subsisted.
But the great earls of the house of Beaumont, Roger of Leicester and
Waleran of Meulan, who dominated the midland shires, chose to act as
independent sovereigns and made terms both in England and Normandy as
if they had been kings.
[Sidenote:
Departure
of Matilda.
]
In all the misery, and exhaustion, and balance of evils, however, time
was working. The first generation of actors was leaving the stage,
and a new one--if not better, still freed from the burden of odium,
duplicity, and dishonesty which had marked the first--came into play.
And the balance of change veered now to Stephen’s side. The year 1145
cut off Geoffrey de Mandeville in the midst of his sins, the year 1143
had seen the death of Miles of Hereford, the empress’s most faithful
servant. In 1147 the great earl Robert of Gloucester passed away, and
it is no small sign of the absolute deadness of the country at the
time, that both his death and the departure of the empress, which must
have almost coincided with it, are not even noticed in the best of the
contemporary historians.
[Sidenote:
The second
Crusade.
]
This year 1147 sees Stephen again ostensibly the sole ruler; really,
however, devoid of power, as he had always been of counsel, his only
strength being the weakness of every one else. This year is marked
by the great crusade of the emperor Conrad of Hohenstaufen, and of
Lewis VII., and Eleanor of Aquitaine, an expedition in which England
nationally had no share, and in which few of the barons took part, but
which was recruited to a considerable extent by volunteers from the
English ports. The capture of Lisbon from the Moors, and the placing
of the kingdom of Portugal upon a sound footing thereby, was the work
mainly of the English pilgrims, but it was not a national work, and it
touches our history merely as suggesting a probability that some of
our most turbulent spirits may have joined the crusade, and thereby
increased the chances of peace at home. With 1147, then, begins a new
series of movements and a new set of actors, the details of whose
doings are involved and obscure.
[Sidenote:
Proceedings
at Rome.
]
[Sidenote:
Quarrel
with
the
archbishop.
]
The death of earl Robert and the departure of the empress left their
party without an ostensible head; for Geoffrey of Anjou was far more
intent on securing Normandy than England, and his son Henry was only
just springing into manhood, David of Scotland being looked upon
apparently as the guardian of his interests. Henry of Winchester had
lost the legation, which had given him such great strength in the
earlier part of the struggle; the popes who had conferred it and
promised to renew it, had rapidly given way to successors who were less
favorable, and the chair of St. Peter was now filled by Eugenius III.,
the friend of St. Bernard, who was at this time the great spiritual
power in European politics. The scantiness of our authorities does not
allow us to speak with certainty, or to decide whether St. Bernard in
the English quarrel was moved by a conviction of Stephen’s wrong-doing,
or by the influence of the Cistercian order; it is, however, certain
that the king and his brother by attempting to force their nephew,
afterward canonized as St. William, into the see of York, in opposition
to the Cistercian abbot of Fountains, had thrown that strong order,
of which Bernard was the ornament, into opposition; and it is also
certain that the strings of political intrigue were held by Eugenius
III., and that every possible advantage was given by him to Henry of
Anjou. The Englishman, Nicolas of St. Alban’s, afterward pope Adrian
IV., was a close confidant of the pope, and John of Salisbury, the
friend of Becket, was a close confidant of Nicolas; Becket was the
clerk and secretary of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury. These may
have been the three strands of a strong diplomatic cord. The first
impulse, however, which was to bring about Stephen’s final humiliation
was, as before, given by himself. In 1148, Eugenius III. called a
council at Rheims. Archbishop Theobald asked leave to go. Stephen
suspected that a plot would be concocted on behalf of the empress and
her son; Henry of Winchester suspected that the archbishop wanted to
apply for the legation. Leave was therefore refused, and Theobald
went without leave; Stephen took the measures usual in such cases,
confiscation and threats, and sent his chief ministers, Richard de
Lucy and William Martel, to counteract the archbishop’s influence
in the council. This had the effect of throwing Theobald, who had
hitherto only been restrained by his oath of allegiance from taking
the side of the empress, openly into the arms of her party; so much
so that he preferred exile to submission, and even went so far as to
consecrate the celebrated Gilbert Foliot, the abbot of Gloucester,
and nominee of Henry of Anjou, to the see of Hereford, in opposition
to both king and bishops. Neither Stephen nor Theobald was, however,
as yet in a position to act freely. Stephen confiscated and Theobald
excommunicated, but a hollow peace was patched up between them in the
autumn by Hugh Bigot and the bishops.
[Sidenote:
Question of
succession.
]
In 1149, Henry of Anjou, now sixteen years old, was knighted by his
great uncle David, at Carlisle. Stephen, accounting this the beginning
of war, hastened to York; but went no farther, and that cloud seemed to
have passed away. The king was growing old, and it was necessary for
him to secure the succession to his son Eustace; the military interest
of the time, always very languid, now flags altogether, and the real
business is conducted at the papal court. There, as usual, fortune
seems to halt according to the depth of the purses of the rivals, the
balance, however, in the main inclining as the pope would have it.
Sometimes there is talk of peace; now the bishop of Winchester is to be
made archbishop of Wessex, now Theobald is to have the legation; now
the bishops are persuaded to recognise Eustace, now they are forbidden
peremptorily to do any such thing. And this goes on for five years,
Stephen relieving the monotony of the time by an occasional expedition
into the West of England.
[Sidenote:
Progress of
Henry of Anjou.
]
Henry, however, was making good use of his time on the Continent.
Eustace, whose marriage with Constantia of France, a marriage purchased
by the treasures of bishop Roger in 1139, made him a dangerous
competitor, laid claim to Normandy. Geoffrey, after defending it on
his son’s behalf during two years, finally made it over to him in 1151
and then died. Henry the next year married Eleanor of Aquitaine, the
divorced wife of Lewis VII., and so secured nearly the whole of Western
France. By the Christmas of 1152 he was ready to make a bold stroke for
England also.
[Sidenote:
Arrival of
Henry, 1153.
]
[Sidenote:
Negotiations
for peace.
]
[Sidenote:
Stephen’s
death 1154.
]
And England was ready for him. The bishops were watching for their
time. The young Eustace was offending and oppressing. The king had
now thrown the great house of Leicester as well as the prelates into
determined opposition. The cessation of justice and the prevalence
of private war made every one long for any change that would bring
rest. In 1152 the bishops, acting under instructions from Rome,
finally refused to sanction the coronation of Eustace, and Stephen,
having again tried force, was compelled to acquiesce. But he saw the
end approaching. In January 1153 Henry of Anjou landed. His friends
gathered round him, Stephen and Eustace collected their mercenaries.
At Malmesbury, and again at Wallingford, the two armies stood face to
face, but the great barons refused to abide by the decision of arms;
on both occasions they mediated, and the armies separated without a
blow. Just after the second meeting Eustace died, and Stephen whose
health was failing, who had lost his noble-hearted wife in 1152, and
whose surviving children were too young to be exposed to the chances or
risks of a disputed succession, could only give way. The negotiations,
begun at Wallingford, were carried on and completed by a treaty at
Westminster, concluded in November, in which Stephen recognised Henry
as his heir, and Henry guaranteed the rights of Stephen’s children to
the inheritance of their parents. At the same time a scheme of reform,
which was to replace the administrative system of Henry I., on its
basis, was determined on, the details of which form a clue to the early
policy of the reign of Henry II. Henry left England some three months
after the conclusion of the peace. His life, it was said, was not safe,
and the pressure which he had to put upon Stephen to induce him to
carry out the reforms was only too likely to result in the renewal
of war. He went away about Easter 1154. Stephen blundered on for six
months and then died; not of a broken heart, perhaps, as the kings of
history generally die, but certainly a disappointed man.
[Sidenote:
Estimate of
Stephen’s character.
]
The reign of Stephen was, it may be fairly said, the period at which
all the evils of feudalism came in England into full bearing, previous
to being cut off and abolished forever under his great successor.
The reign exemplifies to us what the whole century that followed the
Conquest must have been if there had not been strong kings like William
I., and Henry I., sturdily to repress all the disintegrating designs
of their barons and to protect the people. The personal character of
Stephen needs no comment. He was brave. He was at least so far gentle
that none of the atrocious cruelties alleged against his predecessors
are attributed to him. He was false, partly no doubt under the pressure
of circumstances, which he could not control, but in which he had
involved himself by his first betrayal of faith. What may be the
legal force of his election by the nation we need not ask: it was the
breach of his oath that condemned him. No man trusted him; and as he
trusted no one, knowing that he did not deserve trust, and that those
who had betrayed their oath to his uncle would not hesitate to betray
their oaths to him, he expected no one to trust him. He was not great,
either for good or for evil, in himself. If he had had more wisdom he
might have shown more honesty; certainly if he had been more honest he
would have gained more credit for wisdom. Had he been either a more
unscrupulous knave or a more honest man he would certainly have been
far more successful.