GEOFFREY PLANTAGENET AND STEPHEN OF BLOIS.
1128–1139.
All the mental and bodily gifts wherewith nature had endowed the most
favoured members of the Angevin house seemed to have been showered
upon the eldest son of Fulk V. and Aremburg of Maine. The surname by
which he is most generally known, and which an inveterate usage has
attached to his descendants as well as to himself, is in its origin and
meaning curiously unlike most historical surnames; it seems to have
been derived simply from his boyish habit of adorning his cap with a
sprig of “planta-genista,” the broom which in early summer makes the
open country of Anjou and Maine a blaze of living gold. With a fair
and ruddy countenance, lit up by the lightning-glance of a pair of
brilliant eyes; a tall, slender, sinewy frame, made for grace no less
than for strength and activity:--[628] in the unanimous opinion of his
contemporaries, he was emphatically “Geoffrey the Handsome.” To this
prepossessing appearance were added the charms of a gracious manner
and a ready, pleasant speech;[629] and beneath this winning exterior
there lay a considerable share of the quick wits of his race, sharpened
and developed by such a careful education as was given to very few
princes of the time. The intellectual soil was worthy of the pains
bestowed upon it, and brought forth a harvest of, perhaps, somewhat too
precocious scholarship and sagacity. Geoffrey’s fondness for the study
of the past seems to have been an inheritance from Fulk Rechin; the
historian-count might have been proud of a grandson who carried in his
memory all the battles fought, all the great deeds done, not only by
his own people but also in foreign lands.[630] Even Fulk the Good might
have approved a descendant who when still a mere boy could shine in
serious conversation with such a “lettered king” as Henry I.;[631] and
Fulk the Black might not have been ashamed of one who in early youth
felt the “demon-blood” within him too hot to rest content in luxury
and idleness, avoided the corrupting influences of mere revelry, gave
himself up to the active exercises of military life,[632] and, while so
devoted to letters that he would not even go to war without a learned
teacher by his side,[633] turned his book-learning to account in ways
at which ruder warriors and more unworldly scholars were evidently
somewhat astonished.[634] Like his ancestor the Black Count, Geoffrey
was one of those men about whom their intimate associates have a fund
of anecdotes to tell. The “History” of his life put together from
their information, a few years after his death, is chiefly made up of
these stories; and through the mass of trite moralizing and pedantic
verbiage in which the compiler has imbedded them there still peeps out
unmistakeably the peculiar temper of his hero. Geoffrey’s readiness to
forgive those who threw themselves upon his mercy is a favourite theme
of his biographer’s praise; but the instances given of this clemency
indicate more of the vanity and display of chivalry in its narrower
sense than of real tenderness of heart or generosity of soul. Such is
the story of a discontented knight whose ill-will against his sovereign
took the grotesque form of a wish that he had the neck of “that
red-head Geoffrey” fast between the two hot iron plates used for making
a wafer-cake called _oublie_. It chanced that the man whose making of
_oublies_--then, as now, a separate trade--had suggested the wish of
this knight at St.-Aignan shortly afterwards made some for the eating
and in the presence of Count Geoffrey himself, to whom he related
what he had heard. The knight and his comrades were presently caught
harrying the count’s lands; and the biographer is lost in admiration
at Geoffrey’s generosity in forgiving not only their depredations, but
the more heinous crime of having, in a fit of ill-temper after dinner,
expressed a desire to make a wafer of him.[635] On another occasion
we find the count’s wrath averted by the charms of music and verse,
enhanced no doubt by the further charm of a little flattery. Four
Poitevin knights who had been taken captive in one of the skirmishes
so common on the Aquitanian border won their release by the truly
southern expedient of singing in Geoffrey’s hearing a rime which
they had composed in his praise.[636] A touch of truer poetry comes
out in another story. Geoffrey, with a great train of attendants and
noble guests, was once keeping Christmas at Le Mans. From his private
chapel, where he had been attending the nocturnal services of the
vigil, he set out at daybreak at the head of a procession to celebrate
in the cathedral church the holy mysteries of the festival. At the
cathedral door he met a poorly-dressed young clerk, whom he flippantly
saluted: “Any news, sir clerkling?”--“Ay, my lord, the best of good
news!”--“What?” cried Geoffrey, all his curiosity aroused--“tell me
quick!”--“‘Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given!’” Abashed,
Geoffrey asked the youth his name, bade him join the other clergy in
the choir, and as soon as mass was over went straight to the bishop:
“For the love of Him Who was born this day, give me a prebend in your
church.” It was no sooner granted than taking his new acquaintance by
the hand, he begged leave to make him his substitute, and added the
further gift of a stall in his own chapel, as a token of gratitude to
the poor clerk whose answer to his thoughtless question had brought
home to him, perhaps more deeply than he had ever felt them before, the
glad tidings of Christmas morning.[637] From another of these anecdotes
Geoffrey seems, as far as we can make out, to have been the original
hero of an adventure which has since, in slightly varying forms, been
attributed to several other princes, from Charles the Great down to
James the Fifth of Scotland, and which indeed may easily have happened
more than once. Led away by his ardour in pursuit of the chase--next to
literature, his favourite recreation--the count one day outstripped all
his followers, and lost his way alone in the forest of Loches. At last
he fell in with a charcoal-burner, who undertook to conduct him back
to the castle. Geoffrey mounted his guide behind him; and as they rode
along, the peasant, ignorant of his companion’s rank, and taking him
for a simple knight, let himself be drawn into conversation on sundry
matters, including a free criticism on the government of the reigning
count, and the oppressions suffered by the people at the hands of his
household officers. When they reached the gates of Loches, the burst of
joy which greeted the wanderer’s return revealed to the poor man that
he had been talking to the count himself. Overwhelmed with dismay, he
tried to slip off the horse’s back; but Geoffrey held him fast, gave
him the place of honour at the evening banquet, sent him home next day
with a grant of freedom and a liberal gift of money, and profited by
the information acquired from him to institute a thorough reform in the
administration of his own household.[638]
[628] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 233.
[629] _Ib._ pp. 232, 233.
[630] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 232.
[631] _Ib._ p. 235.
[632] _Ib._ p. 233.
[633] _Ib._ p. 276.
[634] See the story of the siege of Montreuil-Bellay, _Hist.
Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 286.
[635] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 257–260.
[636] _Ib._ pp. 253–256.
[637] _Ib._ pp. 274–276.
[638] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 240–250.
Such stories as these, while they help us to form some picture of the
manner of man that Geoffrey was, set him before us in the romantic
light in which he appears to the best advantage. When one turns from
them to a survey of his life as a whole, one is struck with a sense of
something wanting in him. The deficiency was in truth a very serious
one; it was a lack of steady principle and of genuine feeling. The
imaginative and impulsive vein which ran through all the more refined
characters of his race lay in him very near the surface, but it did
not go very deep. His imagination was sensitive, but his heart was
cold; his impulses sprang from the play of a quick fancy, not from
the passion of an ardent soul. One more story may furnish a slight,
but significant, illustration of his temper. For some wrong done to
the see of Tours Geoffrey was once threatened by the archbishop with
excommunication. Either the earlier or the later Fulk of Jerusalem
would have almost certainly begun by a reckless defiance of the threat,
and the later one, at least, would almost as surely have ended by
hearty penance. Geoffrey began and ended with a jest: “Your threats
are vain, most reverend father; you know that the archbishop of Tours
has no jurisdiction over the patrimony of S. Martin, and that I am
one of his canons!”[639] In all the sterling qualities of a ruler and
a man, the hasty, restless, downright Fulk V. was as superior to his
clever charming son as Fulk the Black was superior to Geoffrey Martel.
But it is only fair to bear in mind that Geoffrey Plantagenet’s life
was to a great extent spoilt by his marriage. The yoke which bound
together a lad of fifteen and a woman of twenty-five--especially such a
woman as the Empress Matilda--could not fail to press heavily on both
parties; but the one most seriously injured by it was probably the
young husband. Even in a political point of view, to him personally
his marriage was more of a hindrance than an advantage; it cut him
off from all chance of striking out an independent career. The man
himself was in fact sacrificed to his posterity. Chained down while
his character was yet undeveloped to the irksome position of a mere
appendage to King Henry’s heiress;--plunged suddenly, and for life,
into a sphere of interests and duties alien from his own natural temper
and inclinations:--weak, selfish, unprincipled as Geoffrey too plainly
shewed himself to be, still it was well not only for him but for
others that he had enough of the dogged Angevin thoroughness to carry
him safely and successfully, if not always gloriously, through his
somewhat dreary task till he could make it over to the freer, as well
as stronger, hands of his son.
[639] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 252.
The hope which inspired both the king of England and the count of
Anjou when they planned their children’s marriage can only have been
the hope of a grandson in whom the blood of both would be united, who
would gather into his own person all conflicting claims, and in whom
all feuds would have an end. On this depended all King Henry’s schemes
for the future; on this were concentrated all his desires, on this were
founded all his plans and arrangements during the last seven years
of his reign. In the internal history of England those years are an
almost complete blank; they are in fact simply seven more years of the
administration of Bishop Roger of Salisbury, for Henry himself spent
almost the whole of them upon the continent. His work was finished, and
all that remained to do was to maintain the order of things which he
had established so as to hand it on in full working to his successor.
He must, however, have begun to doubt the success of his schemes when
Geoffrey and Matilda separated little more than twelve months after
their marriage. At first, everything had seemed to be turning in favour
of Henry’s arrangements. Six weeks after the wedding, the death of
William the Clito, wounded in a skirmish with a rival claimant of the
county of Flanders,[640] removed the only competitor whom the king
could deem likely to stand in the way of his plans for the descent of
the crown. In the spring Fulk’s departure for Holy Land left the young
couple sole masters at Angers. All things looked tranquil and secure
when Henry returned to England in July 1129. He had, however, been
there only a few days when he learned, to his great indignation, that
his daughter had been sent away with scorn by her husband, and had
betaken herself with a few attendants to Rouen.[641] There she remained
for nearly two years, while Geoffrey was busy with a general revolt
among his barons. East and west and south and north had all risen at
once; the list of rebels includes the chief landowners in all parts of
the Angevin dominions, from the old eastern outpost Amboise to Laval on
the Breton border, and from Sablé on the confines of Anjou and Maine
to Montreuil-Bellay, Thouars and Mirebeau in the Aquitanian territory
of Loudun, and the yet more remote fief of Parthenay in Poitou.[642]
It seems as if the disaffected barons, worsted in their struggle
with Fulk, had only been waiting till he was out of the country, and
now, when Geoffrey by his quarrel with his wife had deprived himself
of all chance of help from his father-in-law, they closed in upon the
boy-count with one consent, thinking to get him into their power and
wring from him any concessions they pleased. They unintentionally did
him an immense service, for by thus suddenly throwing him upon his
own resources they made a man of him at once. No one knew better than
Geoffrey Plantagenet that he was not the first count of Anjou who had
been left to shift for himself in difficult circumstances at the age
of fifteen; and he faced the danger with a promptitude and energy not
unworthy of Fulk Nerra’s representative. One after another he besieged
the rebel leaders in their strongholds; one after another was forced,
tricked or frightened into submission. Once, while besieging Theobald
of Blazon in the great fortress of Mirebeau, Geoffrey was blockaded
in his turn by the count of Poitou, whom the traitors had called to
their aid; even from this peril, however, his quick wit and youthful
energy extricated him in triumph; and the revolt was finally crushed
by a severe punishment inflicted on its most powerful leader, Lisiard
of Sablé. Geoffrey ravaged the whole of Lisiard’s estates, razed his
castle of Briolet, seized that of Suze and kept it in his own hands for
the rest of its owner’s life; while to guard against further dangers
from the same quarter, by the advice of his faithful barons he reared,
for the express purpose of defence against incursions from Sablé, a
fortress to which he gave the name of Châteauneuf, on the left bank of
the Sarthe, just below the bridge made famous by the death of Count
Robert the Brave.[643]
[640] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 886,
887.
[641] Sim. Durh. _Gesta Reg._ a. 1129.
[642] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 263.
[643] For the barons’ revolt, see _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_
(Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 263–268. The strange and not very
clear story of the double siege of Mirebeau is in pp. 265, 266.
“Exercitus de Mirebello” is recorded in Chronn. S. Albin. and
S. Flor. Salm. a. 1130 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 33, 191).
The Chron. S. Albin. also records the building of Châteauneuf,
a. 1131; the _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_, p. 270, connects it with
the revolt of a lord of Sablé, but apparently with the later
revolt of Lisiard’s son Robert--which, however, the date in the
chronicle shows to be a mistake.
King Henry had joined his daughter in Normandy in the summer of 1130;
in July of the next year they returned to England together. They were
soon followed by a message from Geoffrey, who was now becoming awake to
his rights and duties as husband of King Henry’s heiress, and having
made himself thoroughly master in his own dominions felt it time to
demand the return of his wife. A great council held at Northampton on
September 8 decided that his request should be granted;[644] and the
assembled prelates and barons repeated their homage to Matilda as her
father’s destined successor.[645] She then went back to her husband, by
whom she was, if not warmly welcomed, at least received with all due
courtesy and honour.[646] Fortunately for the ill-matched couple, they
were both of that cold-blooded temperament to which intense personal
affection is not a necessary of life. Henceforth they were content
to work together as partners in political enterprise, and to find in
community of worldly interests a sufficient bond of union. On Mid-Lent
Sunday--March 5, 1133--the bond was made indissoluble by the birth of
their son and heir. Most fittingly, the child to whom so many diverse
nationalities looked as to their future sovereign[647] was born not in
the actual home of either of his parents, but in that city of Le Mans
which lay midway between Normandy and Anjou, which had so long been the
ground of their strife, and had at last been made the scene of their
union.[648] He was baptized in the cathedral church by the bishop of
the diocese on Easter Eve, receiving the name of his grandfather Henry,
and was then, by his mother’s special desire, solemnly placed under the
protection of the local patron saint on the same altar where his father
had been dedicated in like manner thirteen years before.[649]
[644] Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 41 (Arnold, p. 252).
[645] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 6 (Hardy, p. 698).
[646] Hen. Hunt. as above.
[647] “Quem multi populi dominum expectant.” Ord. Vit.
(Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 763.
[648] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._, c. 36 (Mabillon, _Vet. Anal._,
p. 322). Cf. Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1133 (Marchegay,
_Eglises_, pp. 33, 144, 145), Chron. S. Flor. Salm. a. 1133
(_ib._ p. 191, giving a wrong day), _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_
(Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 277, 278, also wrongly dated.
[649] _Acta Pontif. Cenoman._ as above.
To King Henry the birth of his grandson was the crowning of all his
hopes. The greatest difficulty which had hitherto stood in the way
of his scheme for the descent of the crown--the objection which was
sure to be made against Matilda on account of her sex--would lose
more than half its force now that she could be regarded as regent
for her infant son; and Henry at once summoned another great council
at which he again made the archbishops, bishops, earls and barons
of his realm swear fealty to the Empress “and also to her little
son whom he appointed to be king after him.”[650] All things seemed
as safe as human foresight could make them when in the beginning of
August he crossed over to Normandy.[651] Signs and wonders in earth
and sky, related afterwards as tokens of coming evil, accompanied his
voyage;[652] but nearly two years passed away before the portents
were fulfilled. In the spring Matilda joined her father at Rouen, and
there, shortly before Whitsuntide, her second son was born.[653] The
old king’s pleasure in his two little grandchildren was great enough to
keep him lingering on in Normandy with them and their mother, leaving
England to the care of Bishop Roger, till the middle of the following
year,[654] when there came tidings of disturbance on the Welsh border
which made him feel it was time he should return.[655] His daughter
however set herself against his departure. Her policy is not very
clear; but it seems impossible to acquit her of playing a double game
and secretly instigating her husband to attack her father while the
latter was living with her in unsuspecting intimacy and confidence.
Geoffrey now suddenly put forth a claim to certain castles in Normandy
which he asserted had been promised to him at his marriage.[656]
Henry denied the claim; the Angevin temper burst forth at once;
Geoffrey attacked and burned the castle of Beaumont, whose lord was
like himself a son-in-law of Henry, and altogether behaved with such
insulting violence that the king in his wrath was on the point of
taking Matilda, who was with him at Rouen all the while, back with him
to England. But he now found it impossible to leave Normandy. The land
was full of treason; many barons who only disguised their real feelings
from awe of the stern old king had been gained over in secret to the
Angevin cause; among those whose fidelity was most suspected were
Roger of Toëny and William Talvas the lord of Alençon, who had been
restored to the forfeited estates of his family at the intercession of
Geoffrey’s father in 1119. Roger’s castle of Conches was garrisoned
by the king; William Talvas was summoned to Rouen more than once, but
the conscious traitor dared not shew his face; at last Henry again
seized his estates, and then, in September, Talvas fled across the
border to be received with open arms by the count of Anjou.[657] The
countess pleaded warmly with her father for the traitor’s pardon, but
in vain. When she found him inexorable, she suddenly threw off the mask
and shewed on which side her real sympathies lay by parting from the
king in anger and going home to her husband at Angers.[658] Father and
daughter never met again. In the last week of November Henry fell sick
while hunting in the Forest of Lions; feeling his end near, he sent
for his old friend Archbishop Hugh of Rouen to receive his confession
and give him the last sacraments. His son Earl Robert of Gloucester
hurried to the spot at the first tidings of his illness; his daughter
made no sign of a wish for reconciliation; yet when the earl and the
primate asked for his final instructions concerning the succession to
the crown, he remained true to his cherished purpose and once more
bequeathed all his dominions on both sides of the sea to Matilda and
her heirs for ever.[659] He died on the night of December 1, 1135.[660]
[650] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 187.
[651] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 8 (Hardy, p. 700).
[652] Eng. Chron. a. 1135.
[653] Chron. S. Albin. and Rob. Torigni, a. 1134.
[654] Hen. Hunt., l. vii. c. 43 (Arnold, p. 253).
[655] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 900.
[656] This is the version of Orderic (as above); according
to Rob. Torigni (a. 1135) the claim included a good deal
more: “Erat et alia causa ipsius discordiæ major, quia rex
nolebat facere fidelitatem filiæ suæ et marito ejus de omnibus
firmitatibus Normanniæ et Angliæ.”
[657] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 900.
[658] Rob. Torigni, a. 1133. Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii.
c. 34 (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 310).
[659] So says Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 8 (Hardy, p.
701). We shall see however that there were other versions of
Henry’s final testamentary dispositions.
[660] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 8 (Hardy, p. 700).
Flor. Worc. Contin. a. 1135 (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 95). Hen.
Hunt., l. vii. c. 43 (Arnold, p. 254). Will. Jumièges Contin.,
l. viii. c. 33 (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 309). Ord.
Vit. (_ibid._), p. 901.
With him expired the direct male line of the Conqueror; for Duke
Robert’s long captivity had ended a year before.[661] Of the nine
children of William the Conqueror and Matilda of Flanders, the youngest
and the last survivor was now gone, leaving as his sole representatives
his daughter the countess of Anjou and her infant boys. By a
thrice-repeated oath the barons of Normandy and England stood pledged
to acknowledge her as their sovereign. Suddenly there sprang forth an
unexpected competitor. A rivalry which had seemed dead for nearly a
hundred years revived in a new form; and the house of Anjou, on the
very eve of its triumph, found itself once more face to face with the
deadliest of its early foes--the house of Blois.
[661] Flor. Worc. Contin. a. 1134 (Thorpe, vol. ii. pp. 94, 95).
Since Geoffrey Martel’s victory over Theobald III. in 1044 the counts
of Blois have ceased to play a prominent part in our story. Theobald
himself accepted his defeat as final; he seems indeed to have been
almost crushed by it, for he scarcely makes any further appearance
in history, save at his brother Stephen’s death in 1047, when he
requited the help which Stephen had given him against Anjou by turning
his son out of Champagne and appropriating all his possessions. The
injured heir took refuge in Normandy, married the Conqueror’s sister,
and afterwards found in England such ample compensation for what he
had lost that neither he nor his posterity ever made any attempt to
regain their continental heritage. The reunion of Champagne thus
helped to repair the fortunes of the elder line of Blois, so severely
shattered by the blows of the Angevin Hammer; and the ill-gotten gain
prospered so far that some thirty-five years later Theobald’s son and
successor--the young Count Stephen-Henry who in 1069 received Fulk
Rechin’s homage for Touraine--could venture on aspiring to the hand of
King William’s daughter Adela.[662] In winning her he won a prize of
which he was scarcely worthy. Stephen-Henry was indeed, in every way,
a better man than either his father or his grandfather; but he had the
nerveless, unstable temper which was the curse of his race. He went on
the Crusade, and deserted before Antioch was won. He came home to bury
his shame; his wife sent him out again to expiate it. Her burning words
changed the coward into a martyr, and the stain was washed out in his
life-blood beneath the walls of Ramah.[663] In the ordinary course of
things, his successor in the counties of Blois, Chartres and Champagne
would have been his eldest son William. But Stephen had left the entire
control of his affairs, including the disposal of his territories, to
his wife; and Adela knew that her firstborn was a youth of slow wit,
quite unfit for public life. She therefore disinherited him, to his own
complete satisfaction; for he had sense enough to be conscious of his
incapacity for government, and gladly withdrew to the more congenial
life of a simple country gentleman on the estates of his wife, the
lady of Sully in Champagne, while the duties and responsibilities of
the head of the family were laid on the abler shoulders of his next
brother, Theobald. Of the two remaining brothers, the youngest had
been from his infancy dedicated to the Church; the third, who bore his
father’s name of Stephen, had been intrusted for education to his uncle
the king of England.[664] Adela seems to have been Henry’s favourite
sister; she was certainly, in all qualities both of heart and head,
well worthy of his confidence and esteem; and she once at least did
him a service which deserved his utmost gratitude, for it was she who
contrived the opportunity for his reconciliation with S. Anselm. She
was moreover the only one of his sisters who had children; and the
relation between a man and his sister’s son was in the Middle Ages held
as a specially dear and sacred tie. Its force was fully acknowledged
by Henry in the case of the little Stephen. He had the child carefully
brought up at his court with his own son; he knighted him with his own
hand, and bestowed on him, in addition to ample estates in England, the
Norman county of Mortain, which had been for several generations held
by a near connexion of the ducal house, and entitled its possessor to
rank as the first baron of the duchy. Finally, some few years before
the second marriage of the Empress, he arranged a match between Stephen
and another Matilda of scarcely less illustrious descent--the only
daughter and heiress of Count Eustace of Boulogne and Mary of Scotland,
sister to Henry’s own queen.[665] Stephen seems in fact to have been,
next to William the Ætheling, the person for whom Henry cared most;
and after the disaster of the White Ship--in which a lucky attack of
illness saved him from sharing--he became virtually the king’s adoptive
son, and the first layman in the kingdom. His position is illustrated
by a dispute which occurred when the barons took the oath of homage
and fealty to Matilda in the Christmas council of 1126. They swore in
order of precedence. The first place among the lay peers belonged as
an unquestioned right to the king of Scots; the second was claimed at
once by Stephen and by the king’s son Earl Robert of Gloucester; the
dignity of the nephew was held to outweigh the privilege of the son;
and the second layman who swore on bended knee to acknowledge the
Empress Matilda as her father’s successor was her cousin Count Stephen
of Mortain and Boulogne.[666]
[662] The story of this wooing is curious, and linked in
a curious fashion to the old days when Fulk Nerra and Odo
were fighting for Touraine. Gelduin, the “devil of Saumur,”
when Odo’s mistaken tactics and his own loyal service had
cost him the loss of his heritage, refused all the offers of
compensation made to him by his penitent count, and merely
asked him for a certain “bare hill” on the south bank of the
Loire, half way between Amboise and Blois, where he built the
castle afterwards known as Chaumont, and there remained as a
perpetual thorn in the side of the Angevin lords of Amboise,
till in 1035 he gave up his possessions to his son Geoffrey and
went to end his days in peace in an abbey which he had founded
on an estate of his own, hard by the battle-field of Pontlevoy.
Geoffrey’s delicate beauty won him the surname of “the Maiden,”
but beneath his girl-like face lay a spirit as manly and as
noble as that of his father. In 1066 the hot northern blood
in his veins drove him to give up his estates to his niece
Dionysia (who married a son of Lisoy of Amboise) and join the
host of adventurers who followed Duke William over sea. But
after fifteen years of prosperity in England, his heart was
still true to the race whom his father had served so loyally;
and it was Geoffrey’s well-earned influence with the Conqueror
which brought about, in 1082, the marriage between the son of
his former lord and the daughter of his present one (_Gesta
Amb. Domin._, Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 173, 174, 184). On the
marriage see also Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._),
p. 573. After the Conqueror’s death Geoffrey found the state of
things in England no longer to his mind, made over his estates
there to his nephew Savaric, and came home once more, to be
received with open arms by the couple whom he had helped to
marry. He dwelt at their court as an honoured guest for the
rest of his days, lived to complete his hundredth year without
the loss of a single faculty save the light of his still
beautiful eyes, and was buried at last by his father’s side
in the abbey of our Lady of Pontlevoy (_Gesta Amb. Domin._,
Marchegay, _Comtes_, pp. 185, 197, 198).
[663] On the flight from Antioch see Will. Tyr., l. v. c. 10,
and all the historians of the first crusade. On Stephen’s
second expedition and death see Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 789
_et seq._; Will. Tyr., l. x. c. 20; and Will. Malm. _Gesta
Reg._, l. iv. c. 384 (Hardy, pp. 593, 594).
[664] “Nutriendum promovendumque.” Will. Newb., l. i. c. 4
(Howlett, vol. i. p. 31).
[665] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 811.
Will. Jumièges Contin., l. viii. c. 34 (_ib._ p. 310). Will.
Newb., l. i. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 31). Will. Malm. _Hist.
Nov._, l. iii. c. 49 (Hardy, p. 750).
[666] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 3 (Hardy, p. 692).
But for that council and its oath, the succession both to the English
crown and to the Norman ducal coronet would have been at Henry’s death
an open question. Had Matilda’s child been old enough to step at once
into the place destined for him by his grandfather, there would most
likely have been no question at all; Henry II. would have succeeded
Henry I. without opposition, and England would have been spared
nineteen years of anarchy. But Henry Fitz-Empress was not yet three
years old. The practical choice at the moment lay between the surviving
adult descendants of the Conqueror; and of these there were, besides
the Empress, at least two others who might be considered quite as well
qualified to represent him as she was. Independently of any special
engagement, the barons would be fully entitled to choose between the
daughter of William’s son and the sons of his daughter--between Matilda
of Anjou, Theobald of Blois, and Stephen of Boulogne. Of the three,
Matilda was on the whole the one who had least to recommend her. Her
great personal advantage was that she, and she alone, was the child
of a crowned king and queen, of the “good Queen Maude” in whose veins
flowed the ancient royal blood of Wessex, and the king whom his
English subjects revered after he was gone as “a good man,” who “made
peace for men and deer.”[667] Matilda’s birth would be a valuable
qualification in English eyes; but it would carry very little weight
in Normandy. Old-English blood-royal went for nothing there; and King
Henry’s good peace had been much less successfully enforced, and when
enforced much less appreciated, in the duchy than in the kingdom.
Personally, Matilda was almost a stranger in both countries. She had
left her own people and her father’s house at the age of eight years,
to be educated not as the daughter of the English king but as the
child-wife of the Emperor. All her associations, all her interests,
were in Germany; there she was known and respected, there she was at
home. She had only returned to England very unwillingly for a couple
of years, and then left it again to become the wife of a man known
there only as the son of that “earl of Anjou” who had been King Henry’s
most troublesome foe; while in Normandy the Angevin was known but too
well, and hated with a mingled hate and scorn which had grown with the
growth and strengthened with the strength of both county and duchy
ever since the days of Geoffrey Martel. If the principle of female
succession was to be admitted at all--if the Conqueror’s throne was to
be filled by a stranger--one of his daughter’s sons might fill it at
least as worthily as his son’s daughter and her Angevin husband. And
if a sovereign was to be chosen for his personal qualifications, it
would have been hard to find a better choice than Theobald the Great,
count of Blois, Chartres and Champagne. He did not owe his historical
epithet solely to his vast possessions; he was almost the only member
of the house of Blois who shewed any trace of intellectual or moral
greatness. His public life was one long series of vexations and
disappointments; the misfortunes which his race were so apt to bring
upon themselves by their own unsteadiness and self-will seemed to fall
upon him without provocation on his part; it was as if his heritage
had come to him charged with the penalties of all his forefathers’
errors. But it had not come to him charged with the heavier burthen of
their fatal intellectual perversity and moral weakness. In its place
he had the tact, the dignity, the stedfastness of his Norman mother;
and the whole of his after-career fully justified the esteem of the
Norman barons, grounded upon their acquaintance with his person and
character during those wars against the king of France in which his
cause had been inseparably bound up with that of his uncle Henry. In
England, however, he could only be known by report, as the nephew and
ally of the king, and the elder brother of Stephen. It was Stephen, not
Theobald, who had been the king’s favourite and constant companion,
lacking nothing of the rank of an adoptive son save the avowed prospect
of the crown. Stephen had lived in England from his childhood; his
territorial possessions, his personal interests, lay wholly in England
and Normandy; his name and his face were almost as familiar there as
those of Henry himself; he was the first baron of the duchy, the first
layman of the kingdom; moreover, he was the husband of a lady who
stood as near to the Old-English royal line and represented it, to say
the least, as worthily as her imperial cousin and namesake. Lastly,
his marriage gave him yet one more advantage, slight in itself, but
of no small practical use at the moment. As count of Boulogne, he had
immediate command of the shortest passage from the Continent to England.
[667] Eng. Chron. a. 1135.
The tidings of Henry’s death soon reached Angers; and before the
first week of December was out, Matilda presented herself in Normandy
to take possession of her inheritance. The officer in charge of the
border-territories, comprising the forfeited lands of William Talvas
and the county of Hiesmes, at once surrendered them to her and received
her as his liege lady;[668] but before she had time to secure the
duchy, the kingdom was snatched from her grasp. Stephen set out at once
from Wissant and crossed the Channel amid a storm so terrific that
men on shore deemed it could bode nothing less than the end of the
world.[669] It only boded the arrival at Dover of a candidate for the
English crown.
[668] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 903. The
places specified, besides Hiesmes, are Argentan and Domfront.
See also Chron. S. Albin. a. 1135 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p.
34), and _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 294,
where Geoffrey gets the credit of winning them. Rob. Torigni,
a. 1135, adds Ambrières, “Gorra” and Coulommiers.
[669] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 11 (Hardy, p. 703).
Stephen’s promptitude served him as well as the promptitude of William
Rufus and Henry had served them in a like case. But this time the
part which had been played in 1087 by the primate and in 1100 by “the
Witan who were there nigh at hand” was to be played by the citizens of
London. Repulsed from Dover and Canterbury[670]--for the men of Kent
had an hereditary grudge against any one coming from Boulogne--Stephen
pushed on to London, where the well-known face of King Henry’s
favourite nephew was hailed with delight by the citizens, vehemently
declaring that they would have no stranger to rule over them.[671]
They claimed to have inherited the right to a voice in the election
of the sovereign which had once, in theory at least, belonged to the
whole nation, and accordingly the “aldermen and wise folk”[672] came
together to consider what provision should be made for the safety of
the realm, and, for that end, to choose a king. A kingless land, said
they, was exposed to countless perils; the first thing needful was to
make a king as speedily as possible.[673] Of Matilda and her claims not
a word seems to have been said; if any of the leading burgesses, as
tenants-in-chief of the crown, had sworn fealty to her, they were in no
humour to regard it now; and the citizens in general would doubtless
not hold themselves bound by an oath which they had not personally
taken. They claimed the right of election as their special prerogative,
and exercising it without more ado in favour of the only person then at
hand whose birth and character fitted him to undertake the defence of
the kingdom, and who seemed to have been sent to them as by a special
providence in their hour of need, they by common consent acknowledged
Stephen as king. He hurried to Winchester to get possession of the
treasury; the bishop--his own brother--came forth with the chief
citizens to meet him; and the treasurer, who had refused to give up
his keys to the bishop, surrendered them at once to the king-elect.[674]
[670] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 94.
[671] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 3, 4.
[672] “Majores ... natu, consultuque quique provectiores.”
_Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 3.
[673] _Ib._ pp. 3, 4.
[674] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 4–6.
Thus far the two men who ought to have taken the lead in the national
counsels--the primate and the justiciar--had stood looking passively
on. Both now joined Stephen.[675] He lacked nothing to make him full
king but the rite of coronation. This however depended on the primate,
and when called upon to perform it William of Canterbury again drew
back. He had scruples, first, about the oath which he himself, as
well as Stephen and all the barons, had sworn to the Empress Matilda;
and secondly, about the validity of an election so hastily made by a
small part only of the nation. The second objection passed unheeded;
to the first Stephen’s adherents answered that the oath had been
extorted and was therefore not binding, and that several persons who
were with Henry at his death had heard him openly express repentance
for having forced it upon the barons.[676] Roger of Salisbury affirmed
that it was annulled in another way; it had been sworn, by him at
least, on condition of a promise from Henry that he would not give his
daughter in marriage out of the realm without the consent of the Great
Council--a promise which had been immediately broken.[677] Hugh Bigod,
too, the late king’s seneschal, declared upon oath that Henry had in
his presence solemnly absolved the barons from their engagement,[678]
and had even formally disinherited Matilda and designated Stephen as
his successor.[679] The argument which really prevailed, however, was
the objection to a woman’s rule, and the urgent need of having a man
to take the government, and to take it at once.[680] Henry had not yet
been three weeks dead, and already England was in confusion. The first
outcome of the reaction against his stern control had been a general
raid upon the forests; and when men in their frantic vehemence had left
themselves no more game to hunt, they turned their arms against each
other and trampled all law and order under foot.[681] Such a state of
things, resulting solely from the fact that England had been three
weeks without a king, spoke more in Stephen’s favour than any amount
of legal reasonings. The archbishop gave way; all that he demanded
from Stephen was a promise to restore and maintain the liberties of
the Church. Bishop Henry of Winchester offered himself as surety in
his brother’s behalf, and thereby won him the crown.[682] He received
it at Westminster,[683] probably either on the last Sunday in Advent
or on Christmas day,[684] and he issued at the same time, by way of
coronation-charter, a promise at once comprehensive and vague, to
maintain the laws established by his predecessor.[685]
[675] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 11 (Hardy, pp. 703,
704). _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 6.
[676] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 6, 7.
[677] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 3 (Hardy, pp. 692,
693).
[678] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 94.
[679] Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. ii. p. 217. Cf. the speeches
before the battle of Lincoln in Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 15
(Arnold, p. 270), and that of Stephen’s advocates at Rome in
1151, in _Hist. Pontif._ (Pertz, _Mon. Germ. Hist._, vol. xx.
p. 543). Gerv. Cant. (as above) does not name Hugh, but merely
says “quidam ex potentissimis Angliæ.”
[680] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 8. R. Wend. as above.
[681] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 1, 2.
[682] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 11 (Hardy, p. 704).
[683] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 94. Flor. Worc. Contin.
(Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 95).
[684] The date is variously given, as follows: December 15,
Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 902.--December
20, Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above).--December 21, Ann. Waverl.
a. 1136 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii. p. 225).--December 22,
Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 12 (Hardy, p. 704); Gerv.
Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 94; and Ann. Winton. Contin. a. 1135
(Liebermann, _Ungedruckte Anglo-Norman. Geschichtsquellen_,
p. 79).--December 23, Ann. Cantuar. a. 1135 (Liebermann, as
above, p. 5).--December 24, Ann. Margam, a. 1135 (Luard, as
above, vol. i. p. 13).--December 25, Eng. Chron. a. 1135; Ric.
Hexh. (Raine, _Priory of Hexham_, vol. i.) p. 70; _Gesta Cons._
(Marchegay, _Comtes_), p. 156; and Chron. Mort.-Mar. a. 1135
(_Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xii. p. 782).--December 26, Rog.
Howden (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 189; Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. ii. p.
217.--January 1, Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 113.--Will. Malm., the
Contin. Flor. Worc., and the Ann. Margam all add that the day
was a Sunday. This in 1135 would be right for William’s date,
December 22; nothing can make it agree with that of Florence’s
continuator, “xiii. kal. Jan.”; but the Margam annalist may
very possibly have substituted ix. for xi., really meaning the
same as William. The two extreme dates--Orderic’s and John of
Hexham’s--seem equally impossible; unless we may take Orderic’s
“xviii. kal. Jan.” to have simply an x too much, and then there
would be another witness for Christmas-day.
[685] Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 119.
Thus the two great feuds which had hitherto influenced the political
career of the Angevin house--the feud with Blois and the feud with
Normandy--merged at last into one. The successors of Odo of Blois and
those of William the Conqueror were now both represented, as against
the successors of Fulk Nerra and Geoffrey Martel, by one and the same
man, who yet was not, in strict law, the nearest representative of
either. We shall see hereafter that some of the Normans entertained a
project of making Theobald their duke; had they succeeded, the older
quarrel would have revived almost in its original form, as a direct
conflict between the heads of the two rival houses, only with Normandy
instead of Touraine for its object and its battle-ground. Its original
spirit was, however, more likely to be revived, on one side at least,
by the substitution of Stephen for Theobald. Stephen had renounced all
share in his father’s territories; but there was one paternal heir-loom
which he could not renounce, and which descended to him, and him alone,
among the sons of Stephen-Henry and Adela. This was the peculiar mental
and moral constitution which the house of Blois inherited from Odo II.
as surely as the Angevins inherited theirs from Fulk the Black. In
the reigning Count Theobald, indeed, the type was fortunately almost
lost, and in his youngest brother, Bishop Henry of Winchester, it was
very greatly modified by the infusion of Norman blood derived from
their mother. In Stephen, however, the Norman blood had but little
influence on a nature which in its essence was that of the old counts
of Blois. All the characteristic qualities and defects of the race
were there, just as deeply rooted as in Odo of Champagne himself;
the whole difference lay in this, that in Stephen the qualities lay
uppermost and shewed themselves in their most attractive aspect, while
the defects took a form so mild that till their fatal consequences were
seen they appeared hardly more than amiable weaknesses. Gallant knight
and courteous gentleman; warm-hearted, high-spirited, throwing himself
eagerly into every enterprise; all reckless valour in the battle-field,
all gentleness and mercy as soon as the fight was over; open-handed,
generous, gracious to all, and apparently unstained by any personal
vices:--it is easy to understand Henry’s affection for him, and the
high hopes with which at the opening of his career he was regarded
by all classes in the realm.[686] His good qualities were plainly
visible; time and experience alone could reveal the radical defect
which vitiated them all. That defect was simply the old curse of his
race--lack of stedfastness; and it ruined Stephen as surely as it had
ruined Odo. It was ingrained in every fibre of his nature; it acted
like an incurable moral disease, mingling its subtle poison with his
every thought and act, and turning his very virtues into weaknesses;
it reduced his whole kingly career to a mere string of political
inconsistencies and blunders; and it wrecked him at last, as it had
wrecked his great-grandfather, on the rock of the Angevin thoroughness.
[686] See sketches of his character in Will. Malm. _Hist.
Nov._, l. i. c. 12 (Hardy, p. 704), and _Gesta Steph._
(Sewell), p. 3.
For the moment, however, Stephen had outstripped his rival. The Angevin
sagacity had been for once at fault. Steeped as were both Geoffrey and
his wife in continental ideas and feelings, their first thought was of
Normandy, and they had failed to see that in order to secure it their
true policy was to secure England first; or rather, perhaps, they had
failed to see that the mere will of the late king was not sufficient
to give them undisputed possession of both. Stephen’s bold stroke,
whether it resulted from a closer acquaintance with the relation
between the two countries, or simply from a characteristic impulse to
dash straight at the highest object in view, gained him kingdom and
duchy at one blow. Geoffrey had followed his wife into Normandy at
the head of an armed force, and accompanied by William Talvas, whose
influence secured him a welcome at Séez and in all the territories of
the house of Alençon. But the rival races were no sooner in actual
contact than their old hatred burst uncontrollably forth. The Angevins,
though they ostensibly came only to put their countess in peaceful
possession of her heritage, could not yet bring themselves to look upon
the Normans in any light but that of natural enemies; they treated the
districts which had submitted to them as a conquered land, and went
about harrying and plundering till the people rose and attacked them
with such fury that they were compelled to evacuate the country.[687]
The Norman barons now held at Neubourg a meeting at which they decided
to invite Count Theobald of Blois to come and take possession of the
duchy. Theobald came to Rouen, and thence to Lisieux, where on December
21 he had an interview with Matilda’s half-brother Earl Robert of
Gloucester. They were interrupted by a messenger from England with the
tidings of Stephen’s election as king.[688] The Norman barons then
felt that the decision was taken out of their hands; since Stephen
and England had been too quick for them, their best course now was to
accept the accomplished fact, and acknowledged the king-elect as duke
of Normandy.[689] To this Robert of Gloucester assented.[690] Theobald,
despite his natural vexation, at once withdrew his claim, and made in
his brother’s name a truce with Geoffrey to last from Christmas till
the octave of Pentecost; and having thus done his best to secure the
peace of the duchy till its own duke could come to it, he quietly
returned to his own dominions.[691]
[687] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 903.
[688] Rob. Torigni, a. 1135. Cf. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist.
Norm. Scriptt._), pp. 902, 903.
[689] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 903.
[690] Rob. Torigni, a. 1135.
[691] Ord. Vit. as above. Cf. _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay,
_Comtes_), p. 294.
In England, meanwhile, Stephen was carrying all before him. The first
public act in which he had to take part as king was the burial of
his predecessor at Reading on the feast of the Epiphany;[692] the
next was the defence of his realm against a danger which it had not
known for more than forty years--a Scottish invasion. King David
of Scotland, true to the oath which every one else seemed to have
forgotten, arose as the champion of Matilda’s rights, led his troops
into Northumberland, and partly conquered it in her behalf. Stephen met
him near Durham, pacified him by a grant of the earldoms of Carlisle,
Huntingdon and Doncaster to his son Henry,[693] and came back in
peace, almost in triumph, to the Easter festival and the crowning of
his queen.[694] Adherents now came flocking in; the splendour of the
Easter court made up for the meagreness of the Christmas meeting.[695]
Baron and knight, clerk and layman, rallied round the winning young
sovereign who was ready to promise anything, to undertake anything, to
please anybody. The only class who still held aloof were the “new men”
of the last reign, men like Payne Fitz-John and Miles the sheriff of
Gloucester, who owed everything to Henry, and who were bound alike by
gratitude and by policy to uphold his daughter’s cause. But the chief
of them all, Bishop Roger of Salisbury, had already joined Stephen,
and the rest were soon persuaded to follow his example.[696] Shortly
after Easter there came in a yet more important personage. Earl Robert
of Gloucester, the eldest son of the late king, influential alike on
both sides of the sea by his rank, his wealth and his character, was
looked upon both in Normandy and in England as the natural leader of
the baronage. The suddenness of Stephen’s accession had snatched the
leadership out of his hands, and he lingered on in Normandy, watching
the course of events without sharing in them, and meditating how to
reconcile his own interest with his duty to his sister. Stephen,
anxious to win him over, sent him repeated invitations to England; till
at last he decided to let himself be won, at least in appearance, if
only for the sake of gaining a footing in England which might enable
him afterwards to work there in Matilda’s favour. The king’s son,
however, made terms for himself more like a king than a mere earl. He
came to Stephen’s court and did homage for his English estates; but
he did it only on the express condition of being bound by it only so
long as Stephen’s own promises to him were kept, and he himself was
maintained in all his honours and dignities.[697] The first result of
his submission--if submission it can be called--was seen in a great
council at Oxford, where all the bishops swore fealty to the king,
and the vague promise to maintain the “Laws of King Henry,” which
Stephen had issued on his coronation-day, was amplified into a more
detailed and definite charter.[698] Suddenly, a few weeks later, there
went forth a rumour that the king was dead, and the barons at once
broke into revolt. Baldwin of Redvers threw himself into Exeter; Hugh
Bigod, who but a few months ago had been foremost among the supporters
of Stephen, seized Norwich castle, and was only dislodged by the king
in person.[699] He was apparently forgiven; another rebel, Robert
of Bathenton,[700] was caught and hanged, and his castle forced to
surrender. The great castle of Exeter, where Baldwin had shut himself
up with his family and a picked band of young knights, all sworn never
to yield, cost a long and troublesome siege; but the agonies of thirst
at length drove the garrison to break their vow and ask for terms.
Stephen let them all go out free; Baldwin requited his leniency by
hastening to a castle which he possessed in the Isle of Wight, and
there setting himself up as a sort of pirate-chief at the head of
a band of men as reckless as himself. But when Stephen hurried to
Southampton and began to collect a fleet, Baldwin suddenly took fright
and surrendered. His lands were confiscated, and he went into exile
in Anjou, where he was eagerly welcomed by the count, and added one
more to the elements of strife already working in Normandy.[701] In
England his defeat put an end to the revolt, and the Christmas court
at Dunstable brought the first year of King Stephen to a tranquil
close.[702]
[692] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 901, 902. Hen. Hunt., l. viii.
c. 2 (Arnold, pp. 257, 258). Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol.
ii. p. 95. Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 13 (Hardy, p.
705).
[693] For the details of this Scottish expedition and treaty
see Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 4 (Arnold, pp. 258, 289), Ric.
Hexh. (Raine), p. 72, and Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p. 114.
[694] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 96.
[695] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 2 (Arnold, p. 259).
[696] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 14–16.
[697] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 14 (Hardy, pp.
705–707). Cf. _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 9.
[698] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 15 (Hardy, pp.
707–709). Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 119–121.
[699] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 4 (Arnold, p. 259).
[700] Or Bakington. In the _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 18, the
name of the place is _Batthentona_, which Lappenberg and Mr.
Freeman render by Bathenton in Devon. (Mr. Sewell, the editor
of the _Gesta Steph._, rendered it _Bath_.) But while two MSS.
of Hen. Hunt. have “Bathentun,” three others have “Bachentun”
or “Bakentun” (Arnold, p. 259, note 6. In the index Mr. Arnold
suggests “Bagington? Bathampton?”).
[701] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 18–29. Hen. Hunt. as above.
Eng. Chron. a. 1135. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. pp.
96, 97.
[702] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 5 (Arnold, p. 260).
Yet already there were signs that those who had thought to find in
Henry’s nephew such another king as Henry himself[703] were doomed to
disappointment. It was no good omen for the fulfilment of the pledges
embodied in his charters when Stephen broke the one which appealed
most strongly to popular feeling--the promise to mitigate the severe
forest laws--by holding a forest assize at Brampton after his triumph
over Baldwin of Redvers in 1136.[704] Neither was it satisfactory that
the accession of a king specially bound by the circumstances of his
election to rule as a national sovereign proved to be the signal for a
great influx of foreigners--not as in Henry’s time, honest industrious
settlers who fled from their own unquiet homes to share “the good
peace that he made in this land” and to become an useful element in
the growing prosperity of the nation; but as in the Red King’s time,
a rapacious and violent race of mercenary adventurers, chiefly from
Britanny and Flanders; men to whom nothing was sacred, and who flocked
to Stephen as they had flocked to Rufus, attracted by the report of
his prodigality and the hope, only too well founded, of growing rich
upon the spoils of England.[705] However much Henry may have provoked
his subjects by his preference for ministers of continental birth, he
had at least never insulted them by taking for his chief counsellor
and confidant a mere foreign soldier of fortune like that William of
Ypres who acted as the leader of Stephen’s Flemish mercenaries and
whose influence over him excited the wrath of both the English and
the Norman barons.[706] The peace of the country was probably all the
better kept during the year 1137 because its preservation was left
wholly to Bishop Roger and his nephews, while Stephen, accompanied by
his Flemish friend, was well out of the way in Normandy, where he spent
the year in concerting an alliance with his brother,[707] obtaining
the French king’s sanction to his tenure of the duchy, for which his
eldest son did homage in his stead,[708] and vainly endeavouring to
secure it from the combined dangers of internal treason and Angevin
intermeddling. No disturbance occurred in England during his absence;
a Scottish invasion, threatened soon after Easter, was averted by
Archbishop Thurstan of York, who persuaded the Scot king to accept a
truce till Advent,[709] when Stephen was expected to return. He was
no sooner back than David sent to demand for his son the earldom of
Northumberland,[710] which had been, it was said, half promised to
him a year before;[711] on the refusal of his demand,[712] early in
January he led an army into England. An unsuccessful siege of the
border fortress of Carham or Wark was followed by such a harrying of
the whole land from Tweed to Tyne as had not been heard of since the
wild heathenish days of Malcolm Canmore’s youth.[713] David, indeed,
was not personally concerned in this horrible work; he had left it
to the conduct of his nephew William Fitz-Duncan, while he himself
with a strong body of troops took up his quarters at Corbridge.[714]
Stephen marched against him early in February, whereupon he returned
to the siege of Carham; dislodged thence by the English king, he
buried himself and his troops in an almost inaccessible swamp near
Roxburgh, bidding the townsfolk decoy the Southrons by a false show of
friendliness and thus enable him to surround and despatch them.[715]
Stephen however discovered the trap--apparently through the double
treachery of some of his own barons who were concerned in it;[716] he
crossed the Tweed, but instead of marching upon Roxburgh he turned
south-westward and ravaged David’s territories till the lack of
provisions forced him to return to the south.[717]
[703] “Hi uuendon thæt he sculde ben alsuic alse the eom wæs.”
Eng. Chron. a. 1137.
[704] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 4 (Arnold, p. 260).
[705] “Sub Henrico rege multi alienigenæ, qui genialis humi
inquietationibus exagitabantur, Angliam adnavigabant, et
sub ejus alis quietum otium agebant; sub Stephano plures ex
Flandriâ et Britanniâ, rapto vivere assueti, spe magnarum
prædarum Angliam involabant.” Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii.
c. 34. Cf. l. i. c. 14 (Hardy, pp. 731, 706).
[706] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 105. William of Ypres
was son of Philip of Flanders, second son of Count Robert
the Frisian. Although he had no legal place in the house of
Flanders, he was one of the claimants of the county after the
death of Charles of Denmark, against William the Clito and
Theodoric of Alsace. After being the torment of his own country
for nearly ten years, he was compelled to fly, and took service
in England under Stephen. See Walter of Térouanne, _Vita B.
Caroli Com._, in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xiii. pp. 336,
342–347; Galbert of Bruges, _Vita B. Car._ (_ibid._), pp. 354,
355, 359 _et seq._; _Geneal. Com. Flandr._ (_ibid._), pp.
412, 413; Joh. Ypr. _Chron. Sith._ (_ibid._), 466, 468. The
people’s hatred of William was justifiable enough; but it ill
became the barons to cast stones at him. His evil-doings were
not a whit greater than theirs, and the changeless devotion
with which he--a mere hireling, bound to Stephen by no tie but
that of a bargain which Stephen certainly cannot long have had
means to fulfil--stuck to the king in adversity as firmly as in
prosperity, might have put them all to shame.
[707] Theobald renounced all claims upon kingdom and duchy
for two thousand marks of silver to be paid him annually by
Stephen. Rob. Torigni, a. 1137.
[708] This was because William the Ætheling had done homage to
Louis, and it was agreed that Stephen should hold Normandy on
the same terms as his predecessor Henry. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne,
_Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 909. Cf. Rob. Torigni, a. 1137, and
Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 5 (Arnold, p. 260). This was in May.
Ord. Vit. as above.
[709] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 76, 77. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p.
115.
[710] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 77. Joh. Hexh. as above.
[711] Ric. Hexh. (Raine, p. 72) says that some who were
present at the treaty made between Stephen and David in 1136
affirmed that Stephen had then promised that if ever he should
contemplate bestowing the earldom of Northumberland upon any
man, he would first cause to be fairly tried in his court the
claims upon it which Henry of Scotland had inherited from his
mother, the eldest daughter of the last old English earl,
Waltheof.
[712] According to Orderic, Stephen had some ground for his
refusal; for it seems that the form in which the lately expired
truce reached him--at any rate, that in which it reached
Orderic--was that of a plot made by “quidam pestiferi” to kill
all the Normans in England on a certain day, and betray the
realm to the Scots. Some of the plotters were said to have
confessed to Bishop Nigel of Ely, who revealed the plot, and so
it all came out. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._),
p. 912. This plot appears also in R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i.
p. 253, but is there attributed solely to one Ralf, a clerk of
Bishop Nigel’s, and nothing is said about the Scots.
[713] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 77–80. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), pp.
115, 116. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 6 (Arnold, pp. 260, 261). The
Scottish host was “coadunatus de Normannis, Germanis, Anglis,
de Northanhymbranis et Cumbris, de Teswetadalâ, de Lodoneâ, de
Pictis, qui vulgo Galleweienses dicuntur, et Scottis, nec erat
qui eorum numerum sciret.” Ric. Hexh., p. 79.
[714] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 79. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p. 116.
[715] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 81. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p. 117.
[716] Joh. Hexh. as above.
[717] Ric. Hexh. and Joh. Hexh., as above. Hen. Hunt., l. viii.
c. 6 (Arnold, p. 261), and Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol.
ii. p. 102.
He had not long turned his back when David re-entered Northumberland
and marched ravaging along the eastern coast till a mutiny among his
soldiers compelled him to retreat to the border. Thence he sent William
Fitz-Duncan to ravage the district of Craven, while he himself remained
busy with the siege of Carham till he was dislodged by Count Waleran
of Meulan.[718] The Empress meanwhile plied him with entreaties for
support, both by her own letters and through her friends in the north,
chief among whom was her father’s old minister Eustace Fitz-John,[719]
lord of the mighty castles of Bamborough, Knaresborough, Malton and
Alnwick. Eustace had already forfeited his best stronghold, Bamborough,
through his plottings against Stephen;[720] in May 1138 he openly
placed himself, his remaining castles and his men at the disposal of
the Scot king. David hesitated no longer. Gathering up all the forces
of his kingdom,[721] he joined Eustace in an unsuccessful attempt to
regain Bamborough; thence the united host marched burning and harrying
through the already thrice-wasted Patrimony of S. Cuthbert, crossed the
Tees, and in the middle of August made its appearance in Yorkshire.[722]
[718] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 81–84. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p.
117. The record of Waleran’s exploit is in Flor. Worc. Contin.
(as above), p. 112.
[719] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 35.
[720] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 117. “De magnis proceribus Angliæ,
regi quondam Henrico familiarissimus, vir summæ prudentiæ et in
secularibus negotiis magni consilii, qui a rege Anglorum ideo
recesserat quod ab eo in curiâ contra patrium morem captus,
castra quæ ei Rex Henricus commiserat reddere compulsus est.”
Æthelred Riev. _De Bello Standardi_ (Twysden, _X. Scriptt._),
col. 343. On Eustace Fitz-John see also Walbran, _Memor. of
Fountains_, p. 50, note 11.
[721] The Hexham chroniclers reckon them at something over
twenty thousand.
[722] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 84, 85, 89. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._),
p. 118.
There was no help to be looked for from the king. All through that
summer the whole south and west of England had been in a blaze of
revolt which was still unsubdued, and Stephen had neither time,
thought, nor troops to spare for the defence of the north. But in face
of such a danger as this the men of the north needed no help from him.
When their own hearths and altars were threatened by the hereditary
Scottish foe, resistance was a matter not of loyalty but of patriotism.
The barons and great men of the shire at once organized their plans
under the guidance of Archbishop Thurstan, whose lightest word carried
more weight in Yorkshire than anything that Stephen could have said or
done. Inspired by him, the forces of the diocese met at York in the
temper of crusaders. Three days of fasting, almsgiving and penance,
concluding with a solemn absolution and benediction from their primate,
prepared them for their task. Worn out as he was with years and
labours--so feeble that he could neither walk nor ride--Thurstan would
yet have gone forth in his litter at the head of his men to encourage
the host with his presence and his eloquence; but the barons shrank
from such a risk. To them he was the Moses on whose uplifted hands
depended their success in the coming battle; so they sent him back to
wrestle in prayer for them within his own cathedral church, while they
went forth to their earthly warfare against the Scot.[723]
[723] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 86, 87. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), pp.
118, 119.
Early in the morning of Tuesday, August 22, the English forces drew
up in battle array upon Cowton Moor, two miles from Northallerton. In
their midst was the “Standard” from which the fight afterwards took
its name:--a cart into which was fixed a pole surmounted by a silver
pyx containing the Host, and hung round with the consecrated banners
of the local churches, S. Peter of York, S. John of Beverley, S.
Wilfrid of Ripon.[724] Thurstan’s place as chief spiritual adviser of
the army was filled by Ralf, bishop of the Orkneys;[725] their chief
military adviser was Walter Lespec, the pious and noble founder of
Kirkham and Rievaux--the very type and model of a Christian knight of
the time. Standing upon the cart, with the sacred banners waving round
his head, in a voice like a trumpet he addressed his comrades.[726]
He appealed to the barons to prove themselves worthy of their race;
he appealed to the English shire-levies to prove themselves worthy of
their country; he pictured in glowing colours the wrongs which they
all had to avenge, and the worse they would have to suffer if they
survived a defeat; then, grasping the hand of William of Aumale, the
new-made earl of York,[727] he swore aloud to conquer or die.[728] The
unanimous “Amen!” of the English host was answered by shrill cries
of “Albin! Albin!” as the Scots came charging on.[729] The glory of
the first onset was snatched, much against David’s will, by the men of
Galloway, who claimed it as their hereditary right.[730] The second
division of the Scottish host comprised the Cumbrians and the men of
Teviotdale, and the followers of Eustace Fitz-John. A third body was
formed by the men of Lothian and of the western islands, and a fourth
by the king’s household troops, a picked band of English and Norman
knights commanded by David in person.[731] The English array was simple
enough; the whole host stood in one compact mass clustered around the
Standard,--the barons and their followers occupying the centre, the
archers intermingled with them in front, and the general mass of less
well-armed troops of the shire in the rear, with a small detachment
of horse posted at a little distance; the main body of both armies
fought on foot in the old English fashion. The wild Celts of Galloway
dashed headlong upon the English front, only to find their spears and
javelins glance off from the helmets and shields of the knights as from
an iron wall, while their own half-naked bodies were riddled with a
shower of arrows; their leader fell, and they fled in confusion.[732]
The second line under the king’s son, Henry, charged with better
success; but an Englishman lifted up a gory head upon a pole crying
out that it was David’s; and like the English long ago in a like case
at Assandun, the Scottish centre at once fled almost without waiting
to be attacked.[733] David himself fought on well-nigh alone, till
the few who stood around him dragged him off the field, lifted him on
horseback, and fairly compelled him to retreat.[734] His scattered
troops caught sight of the dragon on his standard,[735] and discovering
that he was still alive, rallied enough to enable him to retreat in
good order. Henry gathered up the remnants of the royal body-guard--the
only mounted division of the army--and with them made a gallant
effort to retrieve the day; but the horsemen charged in vain against
the English shield-wall, and falling back with shattered spears and
wounded horses they were compelled to fling away their accoutrements
and escape as best they could.[736] Three days elapsed before Henry
himself could rejoin his father at Carlisle.[737] Eleven hundred Scots
were said to have been slain in the battle or caught in their flight
through the woods and marshes and there despatched.[738] Out of two
hundred armed knights only nineteen carried their mail-coats home
again;[739] such of the rest as escaped at all escaped only with their
lives; and the field was so strewn with baggage, provisions and arms,
left behind by the fugitives, that the victors gave it the nickname
of Baggamore.[740] The enthusiasm which had carried the Yorkshiremen
through the hour of danger carried them also through the temptation
of the hour of triumph. They sullied their victory by no attempt at
pursuit or retaliation, but simply returned as they had come, in solemn
procession, and having restored the holy banners to their several
places with joy and thanksgiving, went quietly back every man to his
own home.[741] Some three months later the garrison of Carham, having
salted their last horse save one, were driven to surrender; but their
stubborn defence had won them the right to march out free with the
honours of war, and all that David gained was the satisfaction of
razing the empty fortress.[742]
[724] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 90, 91. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p.
119. Cf. the description of the Milanese _carroccio_--“quod
apud nos _standard_ dicitur” as the German writer remarks--in
1162 (_Ep. Burchard. Notar. Imp. de Excidio Mediolan._, in
Muratori, _Rer. Ital. Scriptt._, vol. vi. p. 917).
[725] On Ralf see Dixon and Raine, _Fasti Eborac._, vol. i. p.
168.
[726] So says Æthelred of Rievaux (_De Bello Standardi_,
Twysden, _X. Scriptt._, cols. 338, 339), giving a charming
portrait of Walter and a vivid picture of the scene. Hen.
Hunt., l. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 262), attributes the speech to
Bishop Ralf.
[727] “The the king adde beteht Euorwic.” Eng. Chron. a. 1138.
[728] Æthelred Riev., _De Bello Standardi_ (as above), cols.
339–342.
[729] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 9 (Arnold, p. 263).
[730] Æthelred Riev. _De Bello Stand._ (Twysden, _X.
Scriptt._), col. 342. His account of the quarrel for precedence
and its consequences makes one think of the Macdonalds at
Culloden. Ric. Hexh. (Raine, p. 92), says the “Picti” were in
the van; Joh. Hexh. (_ib._ p. 119), calls them “Scotti”--both
meaning simply what at a later time would have been called
“wild Highlanders,” _i.e._ in this case men of Galloway. Hen.
Hunt. puts the Lothian men in front, but he is clearly wrong.
[731] Æthelred Riev. (as above), cols. 342, 343.
[732] _Ib._ col. 345. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 9 (Arnold, pp.
263, 264), who, however, turns the Galwegians into men of
Lothian; see above, note 2{730}.
[733] Æthelred Riev. as above.
[734] Æthelred Riev. _De Bello Stand._ (Twysden, _X.
Scriptt._), col. 346. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 9 (Arnold, p.
264).
[735] “Regale vexillum, quod ad similitudinem draconis
figuratum facile agnoscebatur.” Æthelred Riev. as above. Had S.
Margaret’s son adopted the old royal standard of her West-Saxon
forefathers?
[736] Æthelred Riev. and Hen. Hunt., as above. The two accounts
do not seem to tally at first sight, but they are easily
reconciled.
[737] Æthelred Riev. as above. Cf. Flor. Worc. Contin.
(Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 112.
[738] Hen. Hunt. as above. Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 93.
[739] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.
[740] Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 120. Serlo (Twysden, _X.
Scriptt._), cols. 331, 332. According to this last, the
scattered eatables consisted chiefly of bread, cheese and
horseflesh, which, as well as other flesh, the Scots ate
indifferently raw or cooked.--There is yet one other curious
version of the Scottish rout and its cause: “Archiepiscopus
cum militibus regis latenter occurrens super Cotowne more
juxta Northallerton, fieri jussit in viis subterraneis
quædam instrumenta sonos horribiles reddentia, quæ Anglicè
dicuntur _petronces_; quibus resonantibus, feræ et cætera
armenta quæ procedebant exercitum prædicti David regis in
adjutorium, timore strepitûs perterriti, in exercitum David
ferociter resiliebant.” (MS. _Life of Abp. Thurstan_, quoted
by Mr. Raine, _Priory of Hexh._, vol. i. p. 92, note _t_).
The primate’s share in the victory was so strongly felt at
the time that in the Ann. Cicestr. a. 1138 (Liebermann,
_Geschichtsquellen_, p. 95), the battle appears as “Bellum
inter archiepiscopum Eboracensem et David.”
[741] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 93. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p. 120.
[742] Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 100. Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p. 118.
The defeat of the Scots was shared by the English baron who had brought
them into the land. But Eustace Fitz-John was far from standing alone
in his breach of fealty to the English king. All the elements of
danger and disruption which had been threatening Stephen ever since
his accession suddenly burst forth in the spring of 1138.[743] Between
the king and the barons there had been from the first a total lack of
confidence. It could not be otherwise; for their mutual obligations
were founded on the breach of an earlier obligation contracted by both
towards Matilda and her son. There could not fail to be on both sides a
feeling that as they had all alike broken their faith to the Empress,
so they might at any moment break their faith to each other just as
lightly. But on one side the insecurity lay still deeper. Not only was
the king not sure of his subjects; he was not sure of himself. How far
Stephen was morally justified in accepting the crown after he had sworn
fealty to another candidate for it is a question whose solution depends
upon that of a variety of other questions which we are not bound to
discuss here. Politically, however, he could justify himself only in
one way: by proving his fitness for the office which he had undertaken.
What he proved was his unfitness for it. Stephen, in short, had done
the most momentous deed of his life as he did all the lesser ones,
without first counting the cost; and it was no sooner done than he
found the cost beyond his power to meet. A thoroughly unselfish hero,
a thoroughly unscrupulous tyrant, might have met it successfully, each
in his own way. But Stephen was neither hero nor tyrant; he was “a
mild man, soft and good--and did no justice.”[744] His weakness shewed
itself in a policy of makeshift which only betrayed his uneasiness
and increased his difficulties. His first expedient to strengthen his
position had been the unlucky introduction of the Flemish mercenaries;
his next was the creation of new earldoms in behalf of those whom he
regarded as his especial friends, whereby he hoped to raise up an
aristocracy wholly devoted to himself, but only succeeded in provoking
the resentment and contempt of the older nobility; while to indemnify
his new earls for their lack of territorial endowment and give them
some means of supporting their titular dignity, he was obliged to
provide them with revenues charged upon that of the Crown.[745] But
his prodigality had already made the Crown revenues insufficient for
his own needs;[746] and the next steps were the debasement of the
coinage[747] and the arbitrary spoliation of those whom he mistrusted
for the benefit of his insatiable favourites.[748] They grew greedier
in asking, and he more lavish in giving; castles, lands, anything and
everything, were demanded of him without scruple; and if their demands
were not granted the petitioners at once prepared for defiance.[749]
He flew hither and thither, but nothing came of his restless
activity;[750] he did more harm to himself than to his enemies,
giving away lands and honours almost at random, patching up a hollow
peace,[751] and then, when he found every man’s hand against him and
his hand against every man, bitterly complaining, “Why have they made
me king, only to leave me thus destitute? By our Lord’s Nativity, I
will not be a king thus disgraced!”[752]
[743] “Hi igitur duo anni [_i.e._ 1136 and 1137] Stephani regis
prosperrimi fuerunt, tertius vero ... mediocris et intercisus
fuit; duo vero ultimi exitiales fuerunt et prærupti.” Hen.
Hunt., l. viii. c. 5 (Arnold, p. 260). By this reckoning it
seems that after Stephen’s capture at the battle of Lincoln
Henry does not count him king at all.
[744] Eng. Chron. a. 1137.
[745] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 18 (Hardy, p. 712).
[746] “He hadde get his [Henry’s] tresor, ac he todeld it and
scatered sotlice.” Eng. Chron. a. 1137.
[747] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 34 (Hardy, p. 732).
[748] See the first and fullest example in the story of the
siege of Bedford, December 1138–January 1139; _Gesta Steph._
(Sewell), pp. 30–32. Cf. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 6 (Arnold, p.
260). The sequel of the story is in _Gesta Steph._, p. 74.
[749] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 18 (Hardy, p. 711).
[750] “Modo hic, modo illic subitus aderat,” _ibid._
“Raptabatur enim nunc huc nunc illuc, et adeo vix aliquid
perficiebat.” Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 105. Cf. R.
Glaber’s description of Stephen’s ancestor Odo II. (above, p.
150).
[751] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 18 (Hardy, pp. 711,
712).
[752] _Ib._ c. 17 (p. 711).
Matters were made worse by his relations with Earl Robert of
Gloucester. As son of the late king and half-brother of the Empress;
as one of the greatest and wealthiest landowners in England--earl of
Gloucester by his father’s grant, lord of Bristol and of Glamorgan
by his marriage with the heiress of Robert Fitz-Hamon--all-powerful
throughout the western shires and on the Welsh march--Robert was the
one man who above all others could most influence the policy of the
barons, and whom it was most important for Stephen to conciliate at any
cost. Robert had followed the king back to Normandy in 1137; throughout
their stay there William of Ypres strove, only too successfully, to
set them at variance; a formal reconciliation took place, but it was
a mere form;[753] and a few months after Stephen’s return to England
he was rash enough to order the confiscation of the earl’s English
and Welsh estates, and actually to raze some of his castles.[754] The
consequence was that soon after Whitsuntide Robert sent to the king a
formal renunciation of his allegiance, and to his vassals in England
instructions to prepare for war.[755] This message proved the signal
for a general rising. Geoffrey Talbot had already seized Hereford
castle;[756] in the north Eustace Fitz-John, as we have seen, joined
hands with the Scot king; while throughout the south and west the
barons shewed at once that they had been merely waiting for Robert’s
decision. Bristol under Robert’s own son;[757] Harptree under William
Fitz-John;[758] Castle Cary under Ralf Lovel; Dunster under William
of Mohun; Shrewsbury under William Fitz-Alan;[759] Dudley under
Ralf Paganel;[760] Burne, Ellesmere, Whittington and Overton under
William Peverel;[761] on the south coast, Wareham, another castle of
Earl Robert’s, held by Ralf of Lincoln, and Dover, held by Walkelyn
Maminot[762]:--all these fortresses, and many more, were openly made
ready for defence or defiance; and Stephen’s own constable Miles, who
as sheriff of Gloucester had only a few weeks before welcomed him into
that city with regal honours,[763] now followed the earl’s example and
formally renounced his allegiance.[764]
[753] _Ib._ (p. 710).
[754] _Ib._ c. 18 (p. 713).
[755] _Ib._ p. 712; Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 104. The
grounds of the defiance were--1, the unlawfulness of Stephen’s
accession; 2, his breach of his engagements towards Robert;
3, the unlawfulness of Robert’s own oath to him as being
invalidated, like Stephen’s claim to the crown, by the previous
oath to Matilda. (Will. Malm. as above.)
[756] At Ascension-tide. Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 7 (Arnold,
p. 261). There is also an account of the seizure of Hereford
by Geoffrey Talbot in _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 69, where
it seems to be placed in 1140. The writer has apparently
confused the seizure by Geoffrey in 1138 with that by Miles of
Gloucester in December 1139, and misdated both.
[757] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 261). Ord. Vit.
(Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 917. _Gesta Steph._
(Sewell), p. 36.
[758] Ord. Vit. as above. _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 43.
[759] Hen. Hunt. and Ord. Vit. as above.
[760] “Paganellus [tenuit] castellum de _Ludelaue_,” says Hen.
Hunt. (as above). But we shortly afterwards find Stephen,
according to Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 110),
marching against “castellum de _Duddelæge_, quod Radulf Paignel
contra illum munierat.” As Henry makes no mention of Dudley
at all, and the continuator of Florence makes no mention of
Ludlow till 1139, when he says nothing of its commander, it
seems plain that there has been some mistake between the two
names, which indeed might easily get confounded. Mr. Eyton
(_Antiquities of Shropshire_, vol. v. pp. 244, 245) rules that
the Continuator is right, as there is no trace of any connexion
between Ralf Paganel and Ludlow, which indeed he shews to have
been in other hands at this time. See below, p. 301.
[761] Ord. Vit. as above.
[762] Hen. Hunt. and Ord. Vit. as above.
[763] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 105.
[764] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 104.
The full force of the blow came upon Stephen while he was endeavouring
to dislodge Geoffrey Talbot from Hereford. After a siege of nearly five
weeks’ duration the town caught fire below the bridge; the alarmed
rebels offered terms, and Stephen with his usual clemency allowed them
to depart free.[765] After taking the neighbouring castle of Weobly,
and leaving a garrison there and another at Hereford,[766] he seems
to have returned to London[767] and there collected his forces for an
attack upon the insurgents in their headquarters at Bristol. Geoffrey
Talbot meanwhile made an attempt upon Bath, but was caught and put in
ward by the bishop. The latter however was presently captured in his
turn by the garrison of Bristol, who threatened to hang him unless
their friend was released. The bishop saved his neck by giving up his
prize; Stephen in great indignation marched upon Bath, and was, it is
said, with difficulty restrained from depriving the bishop of his ring
and staff--a statement which tells something of the way in which the
king kept his compact towards the Church. He contented himself however
with putting a garrison into Bath, and hurried on to the siege of
Bristol.[768]
[765] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 106. The writer adds
that on the very day of Stephen’s departure (June 15) Geoffrey
set fire to everything beyond the Wye; seven or eight Welshmen
perished, but no English (_ib._ p. 107)--an indication that the
part of Hereford beyond the Wye was then a Welsh quarter.
[766] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 106.
[767] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 36.
[768] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), pp. 108, 109. In _Gesta
Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 37–39, 41, 42, the story is told at
greater length, and the writer seems to defend the bishop and
to consider his own hero rather ungrateful.
A survey of its environs soon convinced him that he had undertaken
a very difficult task. Bristol with its two encircling rivers was a
natural stronghold of no common order; and on the one side where nature
had left it unprotected, art had supplied the deficiency. The narrow
neck of land at the eastern end of the peninsula on which the town
stood--the only point whence it could be reached without crossing the
water--was in the Conqueror’s last days occupied by a castle which in
the Red King’s reign passed into the hands of Robert Fitz-Hamon, famed
alike in history and legend as the conqueror of Glamorgan; in those
of his son-in-law and successor, Earl Robert of Gloucester,[769] it
grew into a mighty fortress, provided with trench and wall, outworks
and towers, and all other military contrivances then in use,[770] and
surrounded on its exposed eastern side by a moat whose waters joined
those of the Avon on the south.[771] Bristol was in fact Robert’s
military capital, and under the command of his eldest son it had now
become the chief muster-place of all his dispossessed partizans and
followers, as well as of a swarm of mercenaries attracted thither from
all parts of the country by the advantages of the place and the wealth
and renown of its lord.[772] From this stronghold they sallied forth
in all directions to do the king all the mischief in their power. They
overran his lands and those of his adherents like a pack of hounds;
wholesale cattle-lifting was among the least of their misdeeds; every
wealthy man whom they could reach was hunted down or decoyed into their
den, and there tortured with every refinement of ingenious cruelty till
he had given up his uttermost farthing.[773] One Philip Gay, a kinsman
of Earl Robert, specially distinguished himself in the contrivance of
new methods of torture.[774] In his hands, and those of men like him,
Bristol acquired the title of “the stepmother of all England.”[775] If
Bristol could be reduced to submission, Stephen’s work would be more
than half done. He held a council of war with his barons to deliberate
on the best method of beginning the siege. Those who were in earnest
about the matter urged the construction of a mole to dam up the narrow
strait which formed the haven, whereby not only would the inhabitants
be deprived of their chief hope of succour, but the waters, checked
in their course and thrown back upon themselves, would swell into a
mighty flood and speedily overwhelm the city. Meanwhile, added the
supporters of this scheme, Stephen might build a tower on each side of
the city to check all ingress and egress by means of the two bridges,
while he himself should encamp with his host before the castle and
storm or starve it into surrender. Another party, however, whose secret
sympathies were with the besieged, argued that whatever material,
wood or stone, was used for the construction of the dam would be
either swallowed up in the depths of the river or swept away by its
current; and they drew such a dismal picture of the hopelessness of the
undertaking that Stephen gave it up, and with it all attempt at a siege
of Bristol. Turning southward, he struck across the Mendip hills into
the heart of Somerset, and besieged William Lovel in Castle Cary,[776]
a fortress whose remains, in the shape of three grass-covered mounds,
still overlook a little valley where the river Cary takes its rise
at the foot of the Polden hills. According to one account, the place
yielded to Stephen;[777] according to another,[778] he built over
against it a tower in which he left a detachment of soldiers to annoy
its garrison, and marched northward to another castle, Harptree, whose
site is now buried in the middle of a lonely wood. Harptree was gained
by a stratagem somewhat later on;[779] for the present Stephen left it
to be harassed by the garrison of Bath, and pursued his northward march
to Dudley. Here he made no attempt upon the castle, held against him
by Ralf Paganel, but contented himself with burning and harrying the
neighbourhood, and then led his host up the Severn to Shrewsbury.[780]
The old “town in the scrub,” or bush, as its first English conquerors
had called it, had grown under the care of its first Norman earl,
Roger of Montgomery, into one of the chief strongholds of the Welsh
border. The lands attached to the earldom, forfeited by the treason
of Robert of Bellême, had been granted by Henry I. to his second
queen, Adeliza; she and her second husband, William of Aubigny, had
now thrown themselves into the party of her stepdaughter the Empress;
and the castle built by Earl Roger on the neck of a peninsula in the
Severn upon which the town of Shrewsbury stands was held in Matilda’s
interest by William Fitz-Alan, who had married a niece of Robert
of Gloucester.[781] William himself, with his wife and children,
slipped out at the king’s approach, leaving the garrison sworn never
to surrender. Stephen, however, caused the fosse to be filled with
wood, set it on fire, and literally smoked them out.[782] The noblest
were hanged; the rest escaped as best they could,[783] while Stephen
followed up his success by taking a neighbouring castle which belonged
to Fitz-Alan’s uncle Arnulf of Hesdin, and hanging Arnulf himself with
ninety-three of his comrades.[784] This unwonted severity acted as a
salutary warning which took effect at the opposite end of the kingdom.
Queen Matilda, with a squadron of ships manned by sailors from her own
county of Boulogne, was blockading Walkelyn Maminot in Dover, when the
tidings of her husband’s victories in Shropshire induced Walkelyn to
surrender.[785] This was in August.[786] When a truce had been patched
up with Ralf Paganel,[787] the west of England might be considered
fairly pacified, and Stephen was free to march into Dorsetshire against
Earl Robert’s southernmost fortress, Wareham.[788] Nothing, however,
seems to have come of this expedition; and Robert himself was still
out of reach beyond sea. In the midland shires William Peverel, the
lord of the Peak country, was still unsubdued, but he was now almost
isolated, for in the north Eustace Fitz-John, as we have seen, had
drawn his punishment upon himself from other hands than those of the
king. Stephen’s successes in the west, his wife’s success at Dover,
were quickly followed by tidings of the victory at Cowton Moor; and
meanwhile a peacemaker had come upon the scene.
[769] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. i. c. 3 (Hardy, p. 692).
[770] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 37.
[771] See plans and description in Seyer, _Mem. of Bristol_,
vol. i. pp. 373 _et seq._
[772] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 37.
[773] _Ib._ p. 40, 41. Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii.
p. 109. Both writers, however, seem to lay to the sole account
of the Bristol garrison all the horrors which in the Eng.
Chron. a. 1137, are attributed to the barons and soldiers in
general throughout the civil war.
[774] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.
[775] “Ad totius Angliæ novercam, Bristoam.” _Gesta Steph._
(Sewell), p. 41.
[776] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 43. Flor. Worc. Contin.
(Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 110.
[777] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 43, 44.
[778] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.
[779] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), p. 44.
[780] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above. On Dudley see above, p.
295, note 4{760}.
[781] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 917.
[782] “Omnes infumigat et exfumigat.” Flor. Worc. Contin.
(Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 110.
[783] _Ibid._
[784] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 917.
[785] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 7 (Arnold, p. 261).
[786] Ord. Vit. as above.
[787] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above.
[788] _Ibid._
In the spring of 1138 a schism which had rent the Western Church
asunder for seven years was ended by the death of the anti-pope
Anacletus, and Pope Innocent II. profited by the occasion to send
Alberic bishop of Ostia as legate into England--Archbishop William
of Canterbury, who had held a legatine commission together with the
primacy, having died in November 1136.[789] Alberic landed just as
the revolt broke out, and Stephen had therefore no choice but to
accept his credentials and let him pursue his mission, whatever it
might be.[790] It proved to be wholly a mission of peace. Alberic made
a visitation-tour throughout England,[791] ending with a council at
Carlisle, whither the king of Scots, who had adhered to Anacletus, now
came to welcome Innocent’s representative. There, on the neutral ground
of young Henry’s English fief, the legate made an attempt to mediate
between David and Stephen; but all that the former would grant was a
truce until Martinmas, and a promise to bring to Carlisle and there set
free all the captive Englishwomen who could be collected before that
time, as well as to enforce more Christian-like behaviour among his
soldiers for the future.[792] On the third Sunday in Advent the legate
held a council at Westminster, when Theobald, abbot of Bec, was elected
archbishop of Canterbury by the prior of Christ Church and certain
delegates of the convent, in presence of the king and the legate.[793]
Theobald’s consecration, two days after Epiphany, brought Alberic’s
mission to a satisfactory close.[794]
[789] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. pp. 97, 98. On
Alberic see Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 96, 97.
[790] Flor. Worc. Contin. (as above), p. 106.
[791] _Ibid._ The details of his movements in the north are in
Ric. Hexh. (Raine), p. 98, and Joh. Hexh. (_ibid._), p. 121.
[792] Ric. Hex. (Raine), pp. 99, 100. Joh. Hexh. as above.
[793] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 9 (Arnold, p. 265). Ric. Hexh.
(Raine), pp. 101–103. Eng. Chron. a. 1140. Gerv. Cant.
(Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 107–109, and vol. ii. p. 384. Chron.
Becc., in Giles, _Lanfranc_, vol. i. p. 207. _Vita Theobaldi_
(_ibid._), pp. 337, 338.
[794] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 109.
In the work of mediation he had soon found that there was one who had
the matter more nearly at heart, and who had a much better chance
of success than himself. Queen Matilda was warmly attached to her
Scottish relatives, and lost no opportunity of urging her husband to
reconciliation with them. At last, on April 9, she and her cousin Henry
met at Durham; David and Henry gave hostages for their pacific conduct
in the future, and the English earldom of Northumberland was granted
to Henry.[795] The treaty was ratified by Stephen at Nottingham;[796]
the Scottish prince stayed to keep Easter with his cousins, and
afterwards accompanied the king in an expedition against Ludlow. The
castle of Ludlow, founded probably by Roger de Lacy in the reign of
William Rufus, was destined in after-days to become a treasure-house
alike for historian, antiquary and artist. Memories of every period in
English history from the twelfth century to the seventeenth throng the
mighty pile, in which almost every phase of English architecture may
be studied amid surroundings of the most exquisite natural beauty. The
site of the fortress, on a rocky promontory rising more than a hundred
feet above the junction of the Corve and the Teme, was admirably
adapted for defence. The northern and western walls of its outer ward
rose abruptly from the steep slope of the rock itself; on the east and
south it was protected by a ditch, crossed by a bridge which led to the
inner ward and the keep, securely placed near the south-western angle
of the enclosure.[797] The fief of Ludlow had escheated to the Crown
soon after Stephen’s accession,[798] and he had apparently bestowed it
upon one Joce or Joceas of Dinan,[799] who now, it seems, was holding
it against him. The siege came to nothing, though it was made memorable
by an incident which nearly cost the life of Henry of Scotland and
furnished occasion for a characteristic display of Stephen’s personal
bravery. A grappling-iron thrown from over the wall caught the Scottish
prince, dragged him off his horse, and had all but lifted him into
the castle, when the king rushed forward and set him free.[800] This
adventure, however, seems to have cooled Stephen’s ardour for the
assault, and after setting up two towers to hold the garrison in check,
he again withdrew to London.[801] Early in the year he had taken Earl
Robert’s castle of Leeds;[802] and altogether his prospects were
beginning to brighten, when they were suddenly overclouded again by his
own rashness and folly.
[795] With the exception of Newcastle and Bamborough, and on
condition that the local customs established by Henry I. should
be maintained inviolate. Ric. Hexh. (Raine), pp. 105, 106. Hen.
Hunt., l. viii. c. 10 (Arnold, p. 265), has a very strange
version of the way in which this treaty was brought about; see
below, p. 302, note 3{802}.
[796] Ric. Hexh. (as above), p. 106.
[797] See plan and description in Clark, _Mediev. Milit.
Archit._, vol. ii. pp. 273–290.
[798] By the death of Payne Fitz-John. See Eyton, _Antiqu.
Shropshire_, vol. v. p. 244.
[799] This is Joceas’s surname according to the romantic
_History of Fulk Fitzwarine_, and it is adopted by Mr. Eyton,
who takes it as derived from Dinan in Britanny; see his account
of Joceas, _Antiqu. Shropsh._, vol. v. pp. 244–247. According
to this, the name of _Dinham_, now borne by the part of Ludlow
which lies south and west of the castle, would be a corruption
of _Dinan_, which the above-mentioned romance (a work of the
reign of Henry III.) says was the name given to the whole place
in Joceas’s time. Mr. Wright, however (_Hist. Ludlow_, pp. 13,
34), thinks that _Dinham_ was the original name, afterwards
superseded by Ludlow; in which case Joceas becomes simply
“Joceas of Dinham,” with a surname derived not from a foreign
birthplace, but from an English fief.
[800] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 10 (Arnold, p. 265).
[801] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 115.
[802] Hen. Hunt. as above. This is Leeds in Kent. It is
probably through mistaking it for its Yorkshire namesake that
Henry was misled into his odd notion that Stephen himself
was fighting in the north, and compelled the Scots to a
pacification. See above, p. 300, note 7{800}.
The administrative machinery of the state was still in the hands of
Bishop Roger of Salisbury and the disciples whom he had trained. Roger
himself retained his office of justiciar; the treasurership was held
by his nephew, Nigel bishop of Ely, and the chancellorship by one
whom he also called his nephew, but who was known to be really his
son. This latter was commonly distinguished as “Roger the Poor”--a
nickname pointed sarcastically at the enormous wealth of the elder
Roger, compared with which that of the younger might pass for poverty.
Outwardly, the justiciar stood as high in Stephen’s favour as he
had stood in Henry’s; whatever he asked--and he was not slack in
asking--was granted at once: “I shall give him the half of my kingdom
some day, if he demands it!” was Stephen’s own confession.[803] But
the greediness of the one and the lavishness of the other sprang
alike from a secret mistrust which the mischief-makers of the court
did their utmost to foster. Stephen’s personal friends assured him
that the bishop of Salisbury and his nephews were in treasonable
correspondence with the Empress, that they were fortifying and
revictualling their castles in her behalf, and that the worldly pomp
and show, the vast retinue of armed followers, with which they were
wont to appear at court, was really intended for the support of her
cause.[804] How far the suspicion was correct it is difficult to
decide. Roger owed his whole career to King Henry; he had broken his
plighted faith to Henry’s child; it is no wonder if his heart smote
him for the ungrateful deed. If, on the other hand, that deed had
been done from a real sense of duty to the state, a sincere belief in
the advantage of Stephen’s rule for England, then it is no wonder if
he felt that he had made a grievous mistake, and sought to repair it
by a return to his earlier allegiance. But whatever may be thought
of the bishop’s conduct, nothing can justify that of the king. At
Midsummer 1139 Stephen summoned Bishop Roger to come and speak with
him at Oxford. Some foreboding of evil--possibly some consciousness
of double-dealing--made the old man very unwilling to go;[805] but he
did go, and with him went his son the chancellor, and his two nephews,
the treasurer and Alexander bishop of Lincoln,[806] each accompanied
by a train of armed knights. Stephen, equally suspicious, bade his men
arm themselves likewise, to be ready in case of need. While he was
conversing with the bishops in Oxford castle,[807] a dispute about
quarters arose between their followers and those of the count of Meulan
and Alan of Richmond;[808] a fray ensued, in which Alan’s nephew was
nearly killed,[809] whereupon the two Rogers and the bishop of Lincoln
were at once seized by the king. Nigel of Ely, who was lodging apart
from the others outside the town,[810] escaped, threw himself into his
uncle’s castle of Devizes, and prepared to stand a siege.[811]
[803] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 32 (Hardy, p. 729).
[804] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 46, 47.
[805] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 107. (This
writer puts the event a year too early, but afterwards corrects
himself, _ib._ p. 116). Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 20
(Hardy, p. 717), says that he himself heard Roger’s expression
of reluctance: “Per dominam meam S. Mariam (nescio quo
pacto) reluctatur mens mea huic itineri! Hoc scio, quod ejus
utilitatis ero in curiâ, cujus est equinus pullus in pugnâ.”
This really seems to imply nothing more than that he was
conscious of having lost all power to control or guide the king.
[806] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 10 (Arnold, p. 265). Flor. Worc.
Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 107.
[807] “In castro Oxenfordiæ.” Ann. Oseney, a. 1139 (Luard,
_Ann. Monast._, vol. iv. p. 23).
[808] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 20 (Hardy, p. 717),
lays the blame on the men of Alan of Richmond (or Britanny);
the _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell, p. 49) on Waleran of Meulan. Flor.
Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 108, gives no name.
[809] Will. Malm. as above. Cf. Joh. Hexh. (Raine), p. 124.
[810] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 919.
[811] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 108. _Gesta
Steph._ (Sewell), p. 50.
The town of Devizes stands on a steep escarpment of greensand
penetrated by two deep ravines which give it the form of a semicircle
with a tongue projecting in the middle. On this tongue of rocky ground,
five hundred feet above the level of the sea, the bishop of Salisbury
had reared a castle unsurpassed in strength and splendour by any
fortress in Europe.[812] At its gates Stephen soon appeared, bringing
the two Rogers with him as captives. The elder he lodged in a cowshed,
the younger he threatened to hang if the place was not surrendered at
once. Its unhappy owner, in terror for his son’s life, vowed neither
to eat nor drink till the castle was in the hands of Stephen;[813] but
neither his uncle’s fasting nor his cousin’s danger moved Nigel to
yield. The keep, however, was held by the chancellor’s mother, Matilda
of Ramsbury, and the sight of a rope actually round her son’s neck
overcame her resistance. She offered her own life in exchange for his,
and the offer being refused, she surrendered. Nigel could only follow
her example.[814] Roger’s other castles, Sherborne and Malmesbury,
soon fell likewise into the king’s hands, and with them the enormous
treasure collected by their owner.[815] Alexander of Lincoln was
dragged to the gates of Newark and there kept starving till he induced
his people to give up the place; and his other castle, Sleaford, was
gained by the same means.[816]
[812] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 10 (Arnold, p. 265).
[813] Flor. Worc. Contin. as above. In Ord. Vit. (Duchesne,
_Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 920, it is the king who vows to
starve the bishop till the castle is won. Cf. Hen. Hunt. (as
above) and Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 20 (Hardy, p.
718).
[814] Ord. Vit. as above.
[815] Hen. Hunt. and Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._ as above. The
Eng. Chron. tells the whole tale briefly under a wrong year (a.
1137).
[816] Hen. Hunt., l. viii. c. 11 (Arnold, p. 266).
Such an outrage as Stephen had committed could not pass unchallenged.
His victims indeed were unpopular enough; but two of them were
bishops, and the whole English Church was up in arms at once. And
the English Church was no longer without a fully qualified spokesman
and leader. That leader, however, was not the new-made primate. The
legatine commission held by William of Corbeil was not renewed to his
successor in the archbishopric: it was sent instead to the man who had
long been the most influential member of the English episcopate--Henry,
bishop of Winchester. For nearly four months Henry kept this
all-powerful weapon lying idly in the scabbard;[817] now, at the call
of duty, neither fear nor love hindered him from drawing it against his
own brother. Having vainly dinned into Stephen’s ears, both privately
and publicly, his entreaties for the restoration of the two bishops, he
fell back upon his legatine powers and cited the king to answer for his
conduct before a council at Winchester on August 29.[818]
[817] Innocent’s commission bore date March 1, 1139. Will.
Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 22 (Hardy, p. 719).
[818] _Ib._ c. 21 (p. 719).
The council sat for three days, and the case was argued out between
Stephen’s advocate Aubrey de Vere, the bishop of Salisbury and the
legate. Henry formally charged his brother with sacrilege, in having
laid violent hands upon bishops, and appropriated their lands and
goods to his own use. Stephen met the charge with the plea which had
been used by the Conqueror against Odo of Bayeux--he had arrested the
culprits not as bishops, but as unfaithful ministers and disloyal
subjects; and the property which he had taken from them they had
acquired as private men, in defiance of the canons of the Church.
Roger retorted that all these accusations were false; both parties
threatened an appeal to Rome, and swords were drawn almost in the
council-chamber.[819] The legate and the primate intervened as
peacemakers, and a compromise was arranged. It was decreed by the
council that all prelates who held fortresses other than those which
belonged to their sees should place them under the king’s control,
and confine themselves henceforth to their canonical duties and
rights.[820] On the other hand, Stephen’s act was solemnly condemned,
and he had to lay aside his royal robes and come as an humble penitent
to receive the censure of the Church.[821] This humiliation saved
him from the ecclesiastical penalties of his misdeed; from its
political consequences nothing could save him now. He had filled up
the measure of his follies. When the obedience of the barons had been
forfeited--when the trust of the people had been shaken--two forces
still remained by whose help he might have recovered all that he had
lost: the administration and the clergy. At a single blow he had
destroyed the one and thrown the other into opposition.
[819] _Ib._ cc. 22–28 (pp. 719–724).
[820] Flor. Worc. Contin. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 116. _Gesta
Steph._ (Sewell), p. 51.
[821] _Gesta Steph._ (Sewell), pp. 51, 52.
His rivals saw that the hour for which they were vainly waiting in
Normandy had struck at last in England. All Geoffrey’s attempts on
Normandy had failed. At the expiration of his truce with Theobald of
Blois in 1136 the barons of Anjou were again in revolt,[822] and it
was not till the end of September that Geoffrey was free to invade
the duchy. Its internal confusion was such that the twin earls of
Meulan and Leicester (sons of King Henry’s friend Robert), who were
trying to govern it for Stephen, had been obliged again to call Count
Theobald to their aid; but at sight of the hated “Guirribecs,” as the
Angevins were derisively called, the Normans forgot their differences
and rose as one man against the common foe. On October 1 Geoffrey
was wounded in the right foot while besieging the castle of Le Sap
near Lisieux; that night his wife joined him with reinforcements; but
the morning had scarcely dawned when, like another Geoffrey of Anjou
ninety years earlier, he fled with all his host[823]--not, however,
before the military fame of the Norman duke, but before the vengeance
of the Norman people. Next spring he again ventured to attack the
Hiesmois.[824] Stephen, who was now in Normandy and had just won its
investiture from King Louis, prepared to meet the invader; but the
jealousies between his Norman and his Flemish troops compelled him
to abandon the attempt and make another truce for two years.[825]
In April next the Angevins broke the truce;[826] in June Robert of
Gloucester openly declared for them, and under his influence Bayeux
and Caen surrendered to Geoffrey. The count of Anjou retired, however,
before a threatened attack from Stephen’s cousin Ralf of Vermandois,
in conjunction with Waleran of Meulan and William of Ypres.[827] Early
in October he made an unsuccessful attempt upon Falaise.[828] In
November he marched upon Toucques, then one of the most flourishing
seaport towns of Normandy. The burghers were taken captive “seated in
their own arm-chairs,” and in their comfortable houses the Angevins,
after feasting to their heart’s content, settled themselves carelessly
for the night. But their presence was known to William Trussebut, the
governor of the neighbouring castle of Bonneville; and at dead of night
a band of desperate characters, purposely chosen for a desperate deed,
came by his orders from Bonneville to Toucques, dispersed silently
throughout the town, and fired it in forty-five places. The Angevins,
wakened by the cries of the watchmen and the roaring of the flames,
fled headlong, leaving their arms, horses and baggage behind them.
William Trussebut had come forth at the head of his men to intercept
their flight, but the smoke and the darkness were such that neither
party could distinguish friends from foes. Geoffrey, bewildered as
he was, managed to bring some of his men to a stand in a cemetery;
there the rest of the Angevin force gradually collected, and waited,
in shame and trembling, for the day. At the first gleam of morning
they fled, and never stopped till they had buried themselves and their
disgrace safe within the walls of Argentan.[829] This time the Normans
had taught Geoffrey a lesson which he did not soon forget; he did not
venture to meddle with them again for more than two years. Neither
he nor his wife made any movement at all till late in the following
summer, when a prospect was opened for them beyond the sea by Stephen’s
arrest of the two bishops. The council of Winchester broke up on the
first of September;[830] on the thirtieth the Empress was in England.
[822] _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes_), pp. 268, 269.
Cf. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 903.
[823] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 903–908. Rob. Torigni, a. 1136.
[824] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 909, says he was “stipendiarius
conjugi suæ factus.”
[825] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._), p. 910.
Rob. Torigni, a. 1137, makes it three years. Stephen also
promised an annual payment of two thousand marks of silver.
[826] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 916.
[827] Ord. Vit. as above.
[828] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 918. Chronn. S. Albin. and S.
Serg. a. 1138 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, pp. 34, 145).
[829] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 918, 919.
[830] Will. Malm. _Hist. Nov._, l. ii. c. 29 (Hardy, p. 724).