BARGAINING FOR THE CROWN
Earls and barons, whom the rumour of his illness had drawn together,
surrounded the death-bed of Henry I and awaited the result. Among them
was his natural son Robert of Gloucester; but his legal heiress, the
daughter for whom he had done so much and risked so much, was not there.
The recent attempt of her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, to gain by force
the footing in Normandy which Henry had denied him, had drawn her away
from her father, and she was still in Anjou. It was afterward declared
that Henry on his death-bed disinherited her and made Stephen of Boulogne
heir in her place; but this is not probable, and it is met by the
statement which we may believe was derived directly from Robert of
Gloucester, that the dying king declared his will to be still in her
favour. However this may be, no steps were taken by any one in Normandy
to put Matilda in possession of the duchy, or formally to recognize her
right of succession. Why her brother Robert did nothing and allowed the
opportunity to slip, we cannot say. Possibly he did not anticipate a
hostile attempt. At Rouen, whither Henry's body was first taken, the
barons adopted measures to preserve order and to guard the frontiers,
which show that they took counsel on the situation; but nothing was done
about the succession.
In the meantime, another person, as deeply interested in the result, did
not wait for events to shape themselves. Stephen of Boulogne had been a
favourite nephew of Henry I and a favourite at his uncle's court, and he
had been richly provided for. The county of Mortain, usually held by some
member of the ducal house, had been given him; he had shared in the
confiscated lands of the house of Bellême; and he had been married to the
heiress of the practically independent county of Boulogne, which carried
with it a rich inheritance in England. Henry might very well believe that
gratitude would secure from Stephen as faithful a support of his
daughter's cause as he expected from her brother Robert. But in this he
was mistaken. Stephen acted so promptly on the news of his uncle's death
that he must already have decided what his action would be.
When he heard that his uncle had died, Stephen crossed at once to
England. Dover and Canterbury were held by garrisons of Earl Robert's and
refused him admittance, but he pushed on by them to London. There he was
received with welcome by the citizens. London was in a situation to hail
the coming of any one who promised to re-establish order and security,
and this was clearly the motive on which the Londoners acted in all that
followed. A reign of disorder had begun as soon as it was known that the
king was dead, as frequently happened in the medieval state, for the
power that enforced the law, or perhaps that gave validity even to the
law and to the commissions of those who executed it, was suspended while
the throne was vacant. A great commercial city, such as London had grown
to be during the long reign of Henry, would suffer in all its interests
from such a state of things. Indeed, it appears that a body of
plunderers, under one who had been a servant of the late king's, had
established themselves not far from the city, and were by their
operations manufacturing pressing arguments in favour of the immediate
re-establishment of order. It is not necessary to seek for any further
explanation of the welcome which London extended to Stephen. Immediately
on his arrival a council was held in the city, probably the governing
body of the city, the municipal council if we may so call it, which
determined what should be done. Negotiations were not difficult between
parties thus situated, and an agreement was speedily reached. The city
bound itself to recognize Stephen as king, and he promised to put down
disorder and maintain security. Plainly from the account we have of this
arrangement, it was a bargain, a kind of business contract; and Stephen
proceeded at once to show that he intended to keep his side of it by
dispersing the robber band which was annoying the city and hanging its
captain.
It is unnecessary to take seriously the claim of a special right to fill
the throne when it was vacant, which the citizens of London advanced for
themselves according to a contemporary historian of these events.[29] This
is surely less a claim of the citizens than one invented for them by
a partisan who wishes to make Stephen's position appear as strong as
possible; and no one at the time paid any attention to it. Having secured
the support of London, after what can have been only a few days' stay,
Stephen went immediately to Winchester. Before he could really believe
himself king, he had to secure the royal treasures and more support than
he had yet gained. Stephen's own brother Henry, who owed his promotion in
the Church, as Stephen did his in the State, to his uncle, was at this
time Bishop of Winchester; and it was due to him, as a contemporary
declares, that the plan of Stephen succeeded, and the real decision of the
question was made, not at London, but at Winchester.[30] Henry went out
with the citizens of Winchester to meet his brother on his approach, and
he was welcomed as he had been at London. Present there or coming in soon
after, were the Archbishop William of Canterbury, Roger, Bishop of
Salisbury, the head of King Henry's administrative system, and seemingly a
few, but not many, barons. On the question of making Stephen king, the
good, though not strong, Archbishop of Canterbury, was greatly troubled by
the oath which had been sworn in the interest of Matilda. "There are not
enough of us here," his words seem to mean, "to decide upon so important a
step as recognizing this man as king, when we are bound by oath to
recognize another."[31]
Though our evidence is derived from clerical writers, who might
exaggerate the importance of the point, it seems clear from a number of
reasons that this oath to Matilda was really the greatest difficulty in
Stephen's way. That it troubled the conscience of the lay world very much
does not appear, nor that it was regarded either in Normandy or England
as settling the succession. If the Norman barons had been bound by this
oath as well as the English, as is altogether probable, they certainly
acted as if they considered the field clear for other candidates. But it
is evident that the oath was the first and greatest difficulty to be
overcome in securing for Stephen the support of the Church, and this was
indispensable to his success. The active condemnation of the breaking of
this oath survived for a long time in the Church, and with characteristic
medieval logic the fate of those few who violated their oaths and met
some evil end was pointed to as a direct vengeance of God, while that of
the fortunate majority of the faithless is passed over in silence,
including the chief traitor Hugh Bigod, who, as Robert of Gloucester
afterwards declared, had twice sworn falsely, and made of perjury an
elegant accomplishment.[32]
If the scruples of the archbishop were to be overcome, it could not be
done by increasing the number of those who were present to agree to the
accession of Stephen. No material increase of the party of his adherents
could be expected before the ceremony of coronation had made him actual
king. It seems extremely probable that it was at this crisis of affairs,
that the scheme was invented to meet the hesitation of the archbishop; and
it was the only way in which it could have been overcome at the moment.
Certain men stepped forward and declared that at the last Henry repented
of having forced his barons to take this oath, and that he released them
from it. It is hardly possible to avoid the accumulated force of the
evidence which points to Hugh Bigod as the peculiarly guilty person, or to
doubt it was here that he committed the perjury of which so many accused
him. He is said to have sworn that Henry cut off Matilda from the
succession and appointed Stephen his heir; but he probably swore to no
more than is stated above.[33] That Matilda was excluded would be an
almost necessary inference from it, and that Stephen was appointed heir in
her place natural embroidery upon it. Nor can there be any reasonable
doubt, I think, that his oath was deliberately false. Who should be made
to bear the guilt of this scheme, if such it was, cannot be said. It is
hardly likely that Henry of Winchester had any share in it. Whether true
or false, the statement removed the scruples of the archbishop and secured
his consent to Stephen's accession.
With this declaration of Hugh Bigod's, however, was coupled another
matter more of the nature of a positive inducement to the Church. Bishop
Henry seems to have argued with much skill, and very likely to have
believed himself, that if they should agree to make his brother king, he
would restore to the Church that freedom from the control of the State
for which it had been contending since the beginning of the reign of
Henry I, and which was now represented as having been the practice in the
time of their grandfather, William the Conqueror. Stephen agreed at once
to the demand. He was obliged to pay whatever price was set upon the
crown by those who had the disposal of it; but of all the promises which
he made to secure it, this is the one which he came the nearest to
keeping. He swore to "restore liberty to the Church and to preserve it,"
and his brother pledged himself that the oath would be kept. Besides the
adhesion of the Church, Stephen secured at Winchester the royal treasure
which had been accumulated by his uncle and which was not small, and the
obedience of the head of the administrative system, Roger of Salisbury,
who seems to have made no serious difficulty, but who excused his
violation of his oath to Matilda by another pretext, as has already been
mentioned, than the one furnished by Hugh Bigod.
With the new adherents whom he had gained, Stephen at once returned from
Winchester to London for his formal coronation. This took place at
Westminster, probably on December 22, certainly within a very few days of
that date. His supporters were still a very small party in the state.
Very few of the lay barons had as yet declared for him. His chief
dependence must have been upon the two cities of London and Winchester,
and upon the three bishops who had come to his coronation with him, and
who certainly held positions of influence and power in Church and State
far beyond that of the ordinary bishop. At his coronation Stephen renewed
his oath to respect the liberty of the Church, and he issued a brief
charter to the nation at large which is drawn up in very general terms,
confirming the liberties and good laws of Henry, king of the English, and
the good laws and good customs of King Edward, but this can hardly be
regarded as anything more than a proclamation that he intended to make no
changes, a general confirmation of existing rights at the beginning of a
new reign. The Christmas festival Stephen is said to have celebrated at
London with great display. His party had not yet materially grown in
strength, but he was now a consecrated king, and this fait accompli, as
it has been called, was undoubtedly a decided argument with many in the
next few weeks.
Throughout the three weeks that had elapsed since he had learned of his
uncle's death, Stephen had acted with great energy, rapidity, and
courage. Nor is there anything in the course of his reign to show that he
was at any time lacking in these qualities. The period of English history
upon which we enter with the coronation of Stephen is not merely a dreary
period, with no triumphs abroad to be recorded, nor progress at home,
with much loss of what had already been gained, temporary, indeed, but
threatening to be permanent. It is also one of active feudal strife and
anarchy, lasting almost a generation, of the loosening of the bonds of
government, and of suffering by the mass of the nation, the like of which
never recurs in the whole of that history. But this misery fell upon the
country in Stephen's time, not because he failed to understand the duty
of a king, nor because he lacked the energy or courage which a king must
have. The great defect of Stephen's character for the time in which he
lived was that he yielded too easily to persuasion. Gifted with the
popular qualities which win personal favour among men, he had also the
weakness which so often goes with them; he could not long resist the
pressure of those about him. He could not impress men with the fact that
he must be obeyed. His life after his coronation was a laborious one, and
he did not spare himself in his efforts to keep order and to put down
rebellion; but the situation passed irrecoverably beyond his control as
soon as men realized that his will was not inflexible, and that swift and
certain punishment of disobedience need not be feared. Stephen was at
this time towards forty years old, an age which promised mature judgment
and vigorous rule. His wife, who bore the name of Matilda, so common in
the Norman house, was a woman of unusual spirit and energy, and devotedly
attached to him. She stood through her mother, daughter of Malcolm and
Margaret of Scotland, in the same relationship to the empress Matilda
that her husband did, and her descendants would therefore be equally near
akin to the old Saxon dynasty as those of the Empress.
If Stephen had seized the earliest opportunity, his cousin Matilda had
been scarcely less prompt, but she had acted with less decision and with
less discernment of the strategic importance of England. As soon as she
learned of her father's death, she entered Normandy from the south, near
Domfront, and was admitted to that town and to Argentan and Exmes without
opposition by the viscount of that region, who was one of King Henry's
"new men" in Normandy, and who recognized her claims at once. In a few
days she was followed by her husband, Geoffrey, who entered the duchy a
little farther to the east, in alliance with William Talvas, who opened
to him Sees and other fortified places of his fief. So far all seemed
going well, though as compared with the rapidity of Stephen's progress
during those same days, such successes would count but little. Then, for
some unaccountable reason, Geoffrey allowed his troops to plunder the
Normans and to ravage cruelly the lands which had received him as a
friend. The inborn fierceness of the Normans burst out at such treatment,
and the Angevins were swept out of the country with as great cruelties as
they had themselves exercised. Whether this incident had any influence on
the action of the Norman barons it is not possible to say, but it must
have been about the same time that they met at Neubourg to decide the
question of the succession. We have no account of what they did or of
what motives influenced their first decision. Theobald, Count of Blois
and of Champagne, Stephen's elder brother, was present apparently to urge
his own claim, and him they decided, or were on the point of deciding, to
recognize as duke. At this moment a messenger from Stephen arrived and
announced that all the English had accepted Stephen and agreed that he
should be king. This news at once settled the question for the Norman
barons. The reason which we have seen acting so strongly on earlier
occasions--the fear of the consequences if they should try to hold their
lands of two different suzerains--was once more the controlling motive,
and they determined to accept Stephen. Theobald acquiesced in this
decision, though unwillingly, and retired to his own dominions, to show
but little interest in the long strife which these events began.
In England the effect of Stephen's coronation soon made itself felt.
Immediately after the Christmas festivities in London he went with his
court to Reading, whither the body of King Henry had now been brought
from Normandy. There it was interred with becoming pomp, in the presence
of the new king, in the abbey which Henry had founded and richly endowed.
There Stephen issued a charter which is of especial historical value. It
records a grant to Miles of Gloucester, and is signed among others by
Payne Fitz-John. Both these were among Henry's "new men." Miles of
Gloucester especially had received large gifts from the late king, and
had held important office under him. Such men would naturally support
Matilda. They might be expected certainly to hesitate until her cause was
hopeless. Their presence with Stephen, accepting him as king so soon
after his coronation, is evidence of great value as to the drift of
opinion in England about the chance of his success. The charter is
evidence also of one of the difficulties in Stephen's way, and of the
necessity he was under of buying support, which we have seen already and
which played so great a part in the later events of his reign. The
charter confirms Miles in the possession of all the grants which had been
made him in the late reign, and binds the king not to bring suit against
him for anything which he held at the death of Henry. The question
whether a new king, especially one who was not the direct heir of his
predecessor, would respect his grants was a question of great importance
to men in the position of Miles of Gloucester.
At Reading, or perhaps at Oxford, where Stephen may have gone from the
burial of Henry, news came to him that David, king of Scotland, had
crossed the border and was taking possession of the north of England,
from Carlisle to Newcastle. David professed to be acting in behalf of his
niece, Matilda, and out of respect to the oath he had sworn to support
her cause, and he was holding the plundering habits of his army well in
check. We are told that it was with a great army that Stephen marched
against him. He had certainly force enough to make it seem wise to David,
who was on his way to Durham, to fall back and negotiate. Terms were
quickly arranged. David would not conform to the usual rule and become
Stephen's man; and Stephen, still yielding minor matters to secure the
greater, did not insist. But David's son Henry did homage to Stephen, and
received the earldom of Huntingdon, with a vague promise that he might be
given at some later time the other part of the possessions of his
grandfather, Waltheof, the earldom of Northumberland, and with the more
substantial present grant of Carlisle and Doncaster. The other places
which David had occupied were given up.
From the north Stephen returned to London to hold his Easter court. He
was now, he might well believe, king without question, and he intended
to have the Easter assembly make this plain. Special writs of summons
were sent throughout England to all the magnates of Church and State;
and a large and brilliant court came together in response. Charters
issued at this date, when taken together, give us the names of three
archbishops--one, the Archbishop of Rouen--and thirteen bishops, four
being Norman, and thirty-nine barons and officers of the court who were
present, including King David's son Henry, who had come with Stephen from
the north. At this assembly Stephen's queen, Matilda, was crowned, and so
brilliant was the display and so lavish the expenditure that England was
struck with the contrast to the last reign, whose economies had in part
at least accumulated the treasure which Stephen might now scatter with
a free hand to secure his position. The difficulties of his task are
illustrated by an incident which occurred at this court. Mindful of the
necessity of conciliating Scotland, he gave to young Henry, at the Easter
feast, the seat of honour at his right hand; whereupon, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, offended because his claims of precedence had been set aside,
left the court; and Ralph, Earl of Chester, angered because Carlisle, to
which he asserted claims of hereditary right, had been made over to
Henry, cried out upon the young man, and with other barons insulted him
so grievously that his father David was very angry in his turn.
Immediately after the Easter festivities, the court as a body removed to
Oxford. Just after Easter Robert of Gloucester, the Empress's brother,
had landed in England. Stephen had been importuning him for some time to
give up his sister's cause and acknowledge him as king. So far as we
know, Robert had done nothing up to this time to stem the current of
events, and these events were probably a stronger argument with him than
Stephen's inducements. All England and practically all Normandy had
accepted Stephen. The king of Scotland had abandoned the opposition.
Geoffrey and Matilda had accomplished nothing, and seemed to be planning
nothing. The only course that lay plainly open was to make the best terms
possible with the successful usurper, and to await the further course of
events. William of Malmesbury, who looked upon Earl Robert as his patron
and who wrote almost as his panegyrist, thinking, perhaps, dissimulation
a smaller fault than disregard of his oath, accounted for his submission
to Stephen by his desire to gain an opportunity to persuade the English
barons to saner counsels. This statement can hardly be taken as evidence
of Robert's intention, but at any rate he now joined the court at Oxford
and made his bargain with Stephen. He did him homage, and promised to be
his man so long as the king should maintain him in his position and keep
faith with him.
At this Oxford meeting another bargain, even more important to Stephen
than his bargain with the Earl of Gloucester, was put into a form which
may be not improperly called a definitive treaty. This was the bargain
with the Church, to the terms of which Stephen had twice before
consented. The document in which this treaty was embodied is commonly
known as Stephen's second charter; and, witnessed by nearly all those who
witnessed the London charters already referred to, and by the Earl of
Gloucester in addition, it had the force of a royal grant confirmed by
the curia regis. Nothing could prove to us more clearly than this
charter how conscious Stephen was of the desperate character of the
undertaking on which he had ventured, and of the vital necessity of the
support of the Church. The grant is of the most sweeping sort. All that
the Church had demanded in the conflict between Anselm and Henry I is
freely yielded, and more. All simony shall cease, vacancies shall be
canonically filled; the possessions of the Church shall be administered
by its own men during a vacancy,--that is, the feudal rights which had
been exercised by the last two kings are given up; jurisdiction over all
ecclesiastical persons and property is abandoned to the Church;
ecclesiastics shall have full power to dispose of their personal property
by will; all unjust exactions, by whomsoever brought in,--including among
these, no doubt, as Henry of Huntingdon expressly says, the Danegeld,
which the Church had insisted ought not to be paid by its domain
lands,--are to be given up. "These all I concede and confirm," the
charter closes, "saving my royal and due dignity." Dignity in the modern
sense might be left the king, but not much real power over the Church if
this charter was to determine future law and custom. The English Church
would have reached at a stroke a nearer realization of the full programme
of the Hildebrandine reform than all the struggles of nearly a century
had yet secured in any other land, if the king kept his promises. As a
matter of fact, he did not do so entirely, though the Church made more
permanent gain from the weakness of this reign than any other of the
contending and rival parties.
One phrase at the beginning of this charter strikes us with surprise. In
declaring how he had become king, Stephen adds to choice by clergy and
people, and consecration by the archbishop, the confirmation of the pope.
Since when had England, recognized the right of the pope to confirm its
sovereigns or to decide cases of disputed succession? Or is the papacy
securing here, from the necessities of Stephen, a greater concession than
any other in the charter, a practical recognition of the claim which once
Gregory VII had made of the Conqueror only to have it firmly rejected,
and which the Church had not succeeded in establishing in any European
land? In reality England had recognized no claim of papal overlordship,
nor was any such claim in the future based upon this confirmation. The
reference to the pope had been practically forced upon Stephen, whether
he would have taken the step himself or not, and the circumstances made
it of the highest importance to him to proclaim publicly the papal
sanction of his accession. Probably immediately on hearing the news of
Stephen's usurpation, Matilda had despatched to Pope Innocent II,--then
residing at Pisa because Rome was in possession of his rival, Anacletus
II,--an embassy headed by the Bishop of Angers, to appeal to the pope
against the wicked deeds of Stephen, in that he had defrauded her of her
rights and broken his oath, as William of Normandy had once appealed to
the pope against the similar acts of Harold.[34] At Pisa this embassy was
opposed by another of Stephen's, whose spokesman was the archdeacon of
Sees. It must have started at about the same time as Matilda's, and it
brought to the pope the official account of the bishops who had taken part
in the coronation of Stephen.
In the presence of Innocent something like a formal trial occurred. The
case was argued by the champions of the two sides, on questions which it
belonged to the Church to decide, or which at least the Church claimed
the right to decide, the usurpation of an inheritance, and the violation
of an oath. Against Matilda's claim were advanced the arguments which had
already been used with effect in England, that the oath had been extorted
from the barons by force, and that on his death-bed Henry had released
them from it; but more than this, Stephen's advocates suddenly sprang on
their opponents a new and most disconcerting argument, one which would
have had great weight in any Church court, and which attacked both their
claims at once. Matilda could not be the rightful heir, and so the oath
itself could not be binding, because she was of illegitimate birth, being
the daughter of a nun. One account of this debate represents Matilda's
side as nonplussed by this argument and unable to answer it. And they
might well be, for during the long generation since Henry's marriage, no
question of its validity had ever been publicly raised. The sudden
advancing of the doubt at this time shows, however, that it had lingered
on in the minds of some in the Church. It is not likely that the point
would have been in the end dangerous to Matilda's cause, for it would not
have been possible to produce evidence sufficient to warrant the Church
in reversing the decision which Archbishop Anselm had carefully made at
the time. But the pope did not allow the case to come to a decision. He
broke off the debate, and announced that he would not decide the question
nor permit it to be taken up again. His caution was no doubt due to the
difficult position in which Innocent was then placed, with a rival in
possession of the capital of Christendom, the issue uncertain, and the
support of all parties necessary to his cause. Privately, but not as an
official decision, he wrote to Stephen recognizing him as king of
England. The letter reveals a reason in Stephen's favour which probably
availed more with the pope than all the arguments of the English embassy,
the pressure of the king of France. The separation of Anjou at least, if
not of Normandy also, from England, was important to the plans of France,
and the support of the king was essential to the pope.
To Stephen the reasons for the pope's letter were less important than the
fact that such decision as there was was in his favour. He could not do
otherwise than make this public. The letter probably arrived in England
just before, or at the time of, the Easter council in London. To the
Church of England, in regard to the troublesome matter of the oath, it
would be decisive. There could be no reason why Stephen should not be
accepted as king if the pope, with full understanding of the facts, had
accepted him. And so the Church was ready to enter into that formal
treaty with the king which is embodied in Stephen's second charter, which
is a virtual though conditional recognition of him, and which naturally,
as an essential consideration, recites the papal recognition and calls it
not unnaturally a confirmation, though this word may be nothing more than
the mere repetition of an ecclesiastical formula set down by a clerical
hand, without especial significance.
Stephen might now believe himself firmly fixed in the possession of power.
His bold stroke for the crown had proved as successful as Henry I's, and
everything seemed to promise as secure and prosperous a reign. The
all-influential Church had declared for him, and its most influential
leader was his brother Henry of Winchester, who had staked his own honour
in his support. The barons of the kingdom had accepted him, and had
attended his Easter court in unusual numbers as compared with anything
we know of the immediately preceding reigns. Those who should have been
the leaders of his rival's cause had all submitted,--her brother, Robert
of Gloucester, Brian Fitz Count, Miles of Gloucester, Payne Fitz John,
the Bishop of Salisbury, and his great ministerial family. The powerful
house of Beaumont, the earls of Warwick and of Leicester, who held almost
a kingdom in middle England, promised to be as faithful to the new
sovereign as it had been to earlier ones. Even Matilda herself and her
husband Geoffrey seemed to have abandoned effort, having met with no
better success in their appeal to the pope than in their attack on
Normandy. For more than two years nothing occurs which shakes the
security of Stephen's power or which seriously threatens it with the
coming of any disaster.
And yet Stephen, like Henry I, had put himself into a position which only
the highest gifts of statesmanship and character could maintain, and in
these he was fatally lacking. The element of weakness, which is more
apparent in his case, though perhaps not more real, than in Henry's, that
he was a king by "contract," as the result of various bargains, and that
he might be renounced by the other parties to these bargains if he
violated their terms, was only one element in a general situation which
could be dominated by a strong will and by that alone. These bargains
served as excuses for rebellion,--unusually good, to be sure, from a
legal point of view,--but excuses are always easy to find, or are often
thought unnecessary, for resistance to a king whom one may defy with
impunity. The king's uncle had plainly marked out a policy which a ruler
in his situation should follow at the beginning of his reign--to destroy
the power of the most dangerous barons, one by one, and to raise up on
their ruins a body of less powerful new men devoted to himself; but this
policy Stephen had not the insight nor the strength of purpose to follow.
His defect was not the lack of courage. He was conscious of his duty and
unsparing of himself, but he lacked the clear sight and the fixed
purpose, the inflexible determination which the position in which he had
placed himself demanded. To understand the real reason for the period of
anarchy which follows, to know why Stephen, with as fair a start, failed
to rule as Henry I had done, one must see as clearly as possible how, in
the months when his power seemed in no danger of falling, he undermined
it himself through his lack of quick perception and his unsteadiness of
will.
It would not be profitable to discuss here the question whether or not
Stephen was a usurper. Such a discussion is an attempt to measure the acts
of that time by a standard not then in use. As we now judge of such things
he was a usurper; in the forum of morals he must be declared a usurper,
but no one at the time accused him of any wrong-doing beyond the breaking
of his oath.[35] Of no king before or after is so much said, in chronicles
and formal documents, of "election" as is said of Stephen; but of anything
which may be called a formal or constitutional election there is no trace.
The facts recorded indeed illustrate more clearly than in any other case
the process by which, in such circumstances, a king came to the throne. It
was clearly a process of securing the adhesion and consent, one after
another, of influential men or groups of men. In this case it was plainly
bargaining. In every case there was probably something of that--as much
as might be necessary to secure the weight of support that would turn the
scale.
Within a few days of this brilliant assembly at the Easter festival, the
series of events began which was to test Stephen's character and to
reveal its weakness to those who were eager in every reign of feudal
times to profit by such a revelation. A rumour was in some way started
that the king was dead. Instantly Hugh Bigod, who had been present at the
Oxford meeting, and who had shown his own character by his willingness to
take on his soul the guilt of perjury in Stephen's cause, seized Norwich
castle. The incident shows what was likely always to happen on the death
of the king,--the seizure of royal domains or of the possessions of
weaker neighbours, by barons who hoped to gain something when the time of
settlement came. Hugh Bigod had large possessions in East Anglia, and was
ambitious of a greater position still. He became, indeed, in the end,
earl, but without the possession of Norwich. Now he was not disposed to
yield his prey, even if the king were still alive; he did so only when
Stephen came against him in person, and then very unwillingly. That he
received any punishment for his revolt we are not told.
Immediately after this Stephen was called to the opposite side of the
kingdom by news of the local depredations of Robert of Bampton, a minor
baron of Devonshire. His castle was speedily captured, and he was sent
into exile. But greater difficulties were at hand in that region. A baron
of higher rank, Baldwin of Redvers, whose father before him, and himself
in succession, had been faithful adherents of Henry I from the
adventurous and landless days of that prince, seized the castle of Exeter
and attempted to excite a revolt, presumably in the interests of Matilda.
The inhabitants of Exeter refused to join him, and sent at once to
Stephen for aid, which was hurriedly despatched and arrived just in time
to prevent the sacking of the town by the angry rebel. Here was a more
important matter than either of the other two with which the king had had
to deal, and he sat down to the determined siege of the castle. It was
strongly situated on a mass of rock, and resisted the king's earlier
attacks until, after three months, the garrison was brought to the point
of yielding by want of water. At first Stephen, by the advice of his
brother Henry, insisted upon unconditional surrender, even though
Baldwin's wife came to him in person and in great distress to move his
pity. But now, as in Henry I's attack on Robert of Bellême at the
beginning of his reign, another influence made itself felt. The barons in
Stephen's camp began to put pressure on the king to induce him to grant
favourable terms. We know too little of the actual circumstances to be
able to say to what extent Stephen was really forced to yield. In the
more famous incident at Bridgenorth Henry had the support of the English
common soldiers in his army. Here nothing is said of them, or of any
support to the king. But with or without support, he yielded. The
garrison of the castle were allowed to go free with all their personal
property. Whether this was a concession which in the circumstances
Stephen could not well refuse, or an instance of his easy yielding to
pressure, of which there are many later, the effect was the same.
Contemporary opinion declared it to be bad policy, and dated from it more
general resistance to the king. It certainly seems clear from these
cases, especially from the last, that Stephen had virtually given notice
at the beginning of his reign that rebellion against him was not likely
to be visited with the extreme penalty. Baldwin of Redvers did not give
up the struggle with the surrender of Exeter castle. He had possessions
in the Isle of Wight, and he fortified himself there, got together some
ships, and began to prey on the commerce of the channel. Stephen followed
him up, and was about to invade the island when he appeared and
submitted. This time he was exiled, and crossing over to Normandy he took
refuge at the court of Geoffrey and Matilda, where he was received with a
warm welcome.
For the present these events were not followed by anything further of a
disquieting nature. To all appearances Stephen's power had not been in
the least affected. From the coast he went north to Brampton near
Huntingdon, to amuse himself with hunting. There he gave evidence of how
strong he felt himself to be, for he held a forest assize and tried
certain barons for forest offences. In his Oxford charter he had promised
to give up the forests which Henry had added to those of the two
preceding kings, but he had not promised to hold no forest assizes, and
he could not well surrender them. There was something, however, about his
action at Brampton which was regarded as violating his "promise to God
and to the people"; and we may regard it, considering the bitterness of
feeling against the forest customs, especially on the part of the Church,
as evidence that he felt himself very secure, and more important still as
leading to the belief that he would not be bound by his promises.
A somewhat similar impression must have been made at about this time, the
impression at least that the king was trying to make himself strong
enough to be independent of his pledges, if he wished, by the fact that
he was collecting about him a large force of foreign mercenaries,
especially men from Britanny and Flanders. From the date of the Conquest
itself, the paid soldier, the mercenary drawn from outside the dominions
of the sovereign, had been constantly in use in England, not merely in
the armies of the king, but sometimes in the forces of the greater
barons, and had often been a main support in both cases. When kept under
a strong control, the presence of mercenaries had given rise to no
complaints; indeed, it is probable that in the later part of reigns like
those of William I and Henry I their number had been comparatively
insignificant. But in a reign in which the king was dependent on their
aid and obliged to purchase their support by allowing them liberties, as
when William II proposed to play the tyrant, or in the time of Stephen
from the weakness of the king, complaints are frequent of their cruelties
and oppressions, and the defenceless must have suffered whatever they
chose to inflict. The contrast of the reign of Stephen, in the conduct
and character of the foreigners in England, with that of Henry, was noted
at the time. In the commander of his mercenaries, William of Ypres, who
had been one of the unsuccessful pretenders to the countship of Flanders
some years before, Stephen secured one of his most faithful and ablest
adherents.
In the meantime a series of events in Wales during this same year was
revealing another side of Stephen's character, his lack of clear
political vision, his failure to grasp the real importance of a
situation. At the very beginning of the year, the Welsh had revolted in
South Wales, and won a signal victory. From thence the movement spread
toward the west and north, growing in success as it extended. Battles
were won in the field, castles and towns were taken, leaders among the
Norman baronage were slain, and the country was overrun. It looked as if
the tide which had set so steadily against the Welsh had turned at last,
at least in the south-west, and as if the Norman or Flemish colonists
might be driven out. But Stephen did not consider the matter important
enough to demand his personal attention, even after he was relieved of
his trouble with Baldwin of Redvers, though earlier kings had thought
less threatening revolts sufficiently serious to call for great exertions
on their part. He sent some of his mercenaries, but they accomplished
nothing; and he gave some aid to the attempts of interested barons to
recover what had been lost, with no better result. Finally, we are told
by the writer most favourable to Stephen's reputation, he resolved to
expend no more money or effort on the useless attempt, but to leave the
Welsh to weaken themselves by their quarrels among themselves.[36] The
writer declares the policy successful, but we can hardly believe it was
so regarded by those who suffered from it in the disasters of this and
the following year, or by the barons of England in general.
It might well be the case that Stephen's funds were running low. The heavy
taxes and good management of his uncle had left him a full treasury with
which to begin, but the demands upon it had been great. Much support had
undoubtedly been purchased outright by gifts of money. The brilliant
Easter court had been deliberately made a time of lavish display;
mercenary troops could have been collected only at considerable cost; and
the siege of Exeter castle had been expensive as well as troublesome.
Stephen's own possessions in England were very extensive, and the royal
domains were in his hands; but the time was rapidly coming when he must
alienate these permanent sources of supply, lands and revenues, to win
and hold support. It was very likely this lack of ready money which
led Stephen to the second violation of his promises, if the natural
interpretation of the single reference to the fact is correct.[37] In
November of this year, 1136, died William of Corbeil, who had been
Archbishop of Canterbury for thirteen years and legate of the pope in
England for nearly as long. Officers of the king took possession of his
personal property, which Stephen had promised the Church should dispose
of, and found hidden away too large a store of coin for the archbishop's
reputation as a perfect pastor, for he should have distributed it in his
lifetime and then it would have gone to the poor and to his own credit.
Whatever opinion about Stephen might be forming in England during this
first year of his reign, from his violation of his pledges, or his
determination to surround himself with foreign troops, or his selfish
sacrificing of national interests, or his too easy dealing with revolt,
there was as yet no further movement against him. Nobody seemed disposed
to question his right to reign or to withhold obedience, and he could,
without fear of the consequences, turn his attention to Normandy to
secure as firm possession of the duchy as he now had of the kingdom.
About the middle of Lent, 1137, Stephen crossed to Normandy, and remained
there till Christmas of the same year. Normandy had accepted him the year
before, as soon as it knew the decision of England, but there had been no
generally recognized authority to represent the sovereign, and some parts
of the duchy had suffered severely from private war. In the south-east,
the house of Beaumont, Waleran of Meulan and Robert of Leicester, were
carrying on a fierce conflict with Roger of Tosny. In September, 1136,
central Normandy was the scene of another useless and savage raid of
Geoffrey of Anjou, accompanied by William, the last duke of Aquitaine,
William Talvas, and others. They penetrated the country as far as
Lisieux, treating the churches and servants of God, says Orderic Vitalis,
after the manner of the heathen, but were obliged to retreat; and
finally, though he had been joined by Matilda, Geoffrey, badly wounded,
abandoned this attempt also and returned to Anjou.
The general population of the duchy warmly welcomed the coming of
Stephen, from whom they hoped good things and especially order; but the
barons seem to have been less enthusiastic. They resented his use of
Flemish soldiers and the influence of William of Ypres, and they showed
themselves as disposed as in England to prevent the king from gaining any
decisive success. Still, however, there was no strong party against him,
and Stephen seemed to be in acknowledged control of the duchy, even if it
was not a strong control. In May he had an interview with Louis VI of
France, and was recognized by him as duke, on the same terms as Henry I
had been, his son Eustace doing homage in his stead. This arrangement
with France shows the strength of Stephen's position, though the
acknowledgment was no doubt dictated as well by the policy of Louis, but
events of the same month showed Stephen's real weakness. In May Geoffrey
attempted a new invasion with four hundred knights, this time intending
the capture of Caen. But Stephen's army, the Flemings under William of
Ypres, and the forces of some of the Norman barons, blocked the way.
William was anxious to fight, but the Normans refused, and William with
his Flemings left them in disgust and joined Stephen. Geoffrey, however,
gave up his attempt on Caen and drew back to Argentan. In June, on
Stephen's collecting an army to attack Geoffrey, the jealousies between
the Normans and the hired soldiers broke out in open fighting, many were
slain, and the Norman barons withdrew from the army. Geoffrey and Stephen
were now both ready for peace. Geoffrey, it is said, despaired of
accomplishing anything against Stephen, so great was his power and
wealth; and Stephen, on the contrary, must have been influenced by the
weakness which recent events had revealed. In July a truce for two years
was agreed to between them.
Closely connected with these events, but in exactly what way we do not
know, were others which show us something of the relations between the
king and the Earl of Gloucester, and which seem to indicate the growth of
suspicion on both sides. Robert had not come to Normandy with Stephen,
but on his departure he had followed him, crossing at Easter. What he had
been doing in England since he had made his treaty with the king at
Oxford, or what he did in Normandy, where he had extensive possessions,
we do not know; but the period closes with an arrangement between him and
Stephen which looks less like a renewal of their treaty than a truce. In
the troubles in the king's army during the summer campaign against
Geoffrey, Robert was suspected of treason. At one time William of Ypres
set some kind of a trap for him, in which he hoped to take him at a
disadvantage, but failed. The outcome of whatever happened was, evidently
that Stephen found himself placed in a wrong and somewhat dangerous
position, and was obliged to take an oath that he would attempt nothing
further against the earl, and to pledge his faith in the hand of the
Archbishop of Rouen. Robert accepted the new engagements of the king in
form, and took no open steps against him for the present; but it is clear
that the relation between them was one of scarcely disguised suspicion.
It was a situation with which a king like Henry I would have known how to
deal, but a king like Henry I would have occupied by this time a stronger
position from which to move than Stephen did, because his character would
have made a far different impression.
While these events were taking place in Normandy, across the border in
France other events were occurring, to be in the end of as great interest
in the history of England as in that of France. When William, Duke of
Aquitaine, returned from his expedition with Geoffrey, he seems to have
been troubled in his conscience by his heathenish deeds in Normandy, and
he made a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella to seek the pardon of
heaven. In this he seemed to be successful, and he died there before the
altar of the apostle, with all the comforts of religion. When he knew
that his end was approaching, he besought his barons to carry out the
plan which he had formed of conveying the duchy to the king of France,
with the hand of his daughter and heiress Eleanor for his son Louis. The
proposition was gladly accepted, the marriage took place in July at
Bordeaux, and the young sovereign received the homage of the vassals of a
territory more than twice his father's in area, which was thus united
with the crown. Before the bridal pair could return to Paris, the reign
of Louis VI had ended, and Louis the Young had become king as Louis VII.
He was at this time about seventeen years old. His wife was two years
younger, and Henry of Anjou, the son of Matilda, whose life was to be
even more closely associated with hers, had not yet finished his fifth
year.
During Stephen's absence in Normandy there had been nothing to disturb
the peace of England. Soon after his departure the king of Scotland had
threatened to invade the north, but Thurstan, the aged Archbishop of
York, went to meet him, and persuaded him to agree to a truce until the
return of King Stephen from Normandy. This occurred not long before
Christmas. Most of the barons of Normandy crossed over with him, but
Robert of Gloucester again took his own course and remained behind. There
was business for Stephen in England at once. An embassy from David of
Scotland waited on him and declared the truce at an end unless he were
prepared to confer the half-promised earldom of Northumberland on Henry
without further delay. Another matter, typical of Stephen and of the
times, demanded even earlier attention. Stephen owed much, as had all the
Norman kings, to the house of Beaumont, and he now attempted to make some
return. Simon of Beauchamp, who held the barony of Bedford and the
custody of the king's castle in that town, had died shortly before,
leaving a daughter only. In the true style of the strong kings, his
predecessors, Stephen proposed, without consulting the wishes of the
family, to bestow the hand and inheritance of the heiress on Hugh, known
as "the Poor," because he was yet unprovided for, brother of Robert of
Leicester and Waleran of Meulan, and to give him the earldom of Bedford.
The castle had been occupied with his consent by Miles of Beauchamp,
Simon's nephew, and to him Stephen sent orders to hand the castle over to
Hugh and to do homage to the new Earl of Bedford for whatever he held of
the king. It was to this last command apparently that Miles especially
objected, and he refused to surrender the castle unless his own
inheritance was secured to him. In great anger, Stephen collected a large
army and began the siege of the castle, perhaps on Christmas day itself.
The castle was stoutly defended. The siege had to be turned into a
blockade. Before it ended the king was obliged to go away to defend the
north against the Scots. After a siege of five weeks the castle was
surrendered to Bishop Henry of Winchester, who seems for some reason to
have opposed his brother's action in the case from the beginning.
[29] Gesta Stephani, 5.
[30] W. Malm., Hist. Nov., sec. 460.
[31] Gesta Stefhani, 8.
[32] Henry of Huntingdon, 270.
[33] See Round, G. de Mandeville, 6.
[34] Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 250-261; and Böhmer, Kirche
und Staat, 333-335.
[35] Freeman, Norman Conquest, Vol. V, App. DD., is right in calling
attention to the fact but wrong in the use he makes of it.
[36] Gesta Stephani, 14.
[37] Ibid., 7.