WILLIAM THE RED--HENRY I.--STEPHEN.
1087-1154.
The eighty years which followed the death of William the Conqueror
were spent in the solution of the problem which he had left behind
him. William had brought over to England two principles of conflicting
tendency--the one that of strong monarchical government, where
everything depends on the king; the other that of feudal anarchy.
He himself had been able to control the turbulent horde of military
adventurers among whom he had distributed the lands of England, but
would his sons be equally successful? We have now to see how two
strong-handed kings kept down the monster of feudal rebellion; how one
weak king's reign sufficed to put the monarchy in the gravest danger;
and how, finally, William's great-grandson quelled the unruly baronage
so that it was never again a serious danger for the rest of England's
national life.
[Sidenote: =William's sons.=]
William had left behind him three sons. To Robert the eldest, the rebel
of 1079, he had bequeathed, not the English crown, but his own ancient
heritage of Normandy. William the Red, the second son, who had always
been his father's loyal helper, was to be King of England. Henry, the
youngest son, was left only a legacy of £5000; the Conqueror would not
parcel out his dominions any further, but said that his latest-born was
too capable a man not to make his own way in the world.
[Sidenote: =Risings of the barons.--Loyalty of the English.=]
William the Red hurried over to England the moment that the breath
was out of his father's body, and was duly crowned by Lanfranc
the archbishop. But it was no easy heritage that he took up; the
Conqueror's death was the instant signal for the outbreak of feudal
anarchy. All the more turbulent of the Norman barons and bishops,
headed by Odo of Bayeux, who had just been released from prison, took
arms, garrisoned their castles, and began to harass their neighbours.
They made it their pretext that Duke Robert, as the eldest son, ought
to succeed his father in all his dominions; but their true reason
for espousing his cause was that Robert was known to be a weak and
shiftless personage, under whose rule every great man would be able to
do whatever he might please. In order to defeat this rising William
the Red took the bold step of throwing himself upon the loyalty of the
native English. He summoned out the militia of the shires, proclaiming
that every man who did not follow his king to the field should be held
_nithing_, a worthless coward, and promising that he would lighten his
father's heavy yoke and rule with a gentle and merciful hand. The fyrd
turned out in unexpected strength and loyalty, and with its aid William
put down all the Norman rebels, and drove them out of the realm. Duke
Robert, who had prepared to come to their aid, was too late, and had to
return to his duchy foiled and shamed.
[Sidenote: =Character and policy of William II.=]
William's promise that he would be a good and easy lord to his subjects
was not kept for long. The new king was in all things an evil copy
of his father: he had William's courage and ability, but none of
his better moral qualities; he had no sense of justice, and was not
restrained by any religious scruples. He was, indeed, an open atheist,
and scoffed at all forms of religion, scornfully observing that he
would become a Jew if it was made worth his while. Moreover, his
private life was infamous, and no man who cared for honour or purity
could abide at his court.
Nevertheless, his government was far more tolerable than the anarchy
of baronial rule would have been. If he sheared his subjects close
himself, he took care that no one else should molest them, and one bad
master is always better than many. Under him England was cruelly taxed,
and many isolated acts of oppression were committed, but he put down
civil war, overcame his foreign enemies, and ruled victoriously for all
his days.
[Sidenote: =War with Scotland.--Cumberland finally becomes English.=]
Of William's exploits, those which were the most profitable for the
peace of England were his enterprises against the Scots and the Welsh.
Malcolm Canmore, though he had done homage to William I., repeatedly
led armies into England against William's son. In this first Scottish
war the Red King, though his fleet was destroyed by a storm, compelled
Malcolm to submit, and took from him the city of Carlisle and the
district of Cumberland. This land, the southern half of the old Welsh
principality of Strathclyde, had been tributary to the Scots ever since
King Edmund granted it to Malcolm I. in 945. It now became an English
county and bishopric, and the border of England was fixed at the
Solway, and no longer at the hills of the Lake District (1092). Only a
year later the Scottish king again invaded England, but was slain at
Alnwick. He ran into an ambush which the Earl of Northumberland laid
for him, and fell; with him died his son Edward and the best of his
knights. The Scottish crown passed, after much fighting and contention,
to Eadgar, Malcolm's second son by his English wife Margaret, the
sister of Eadgar the Etheling. This prince, trained up by his pious
and able mother, and aided and counselled by his uncle the Etheling,
was the first King of Scotland who spoke English as his native tongue,
and made the Lowlands his favourite abode. He surrounded himself
with English followers, and ceased to be a mere Celtic lord of the
Highlands, as his fathers had been.
[Sidenote: =South Wales partly occupied by the Normans.=]
William the Red's arms were as successful against Wales as against
Scotland. During his reign the southern half of the land of the Cymry
was overrun by Norman barons, who won for themselves new lordships
beyond the Wye and Severn, and did homage for them to the king. Many of
these adventurers married into the families of the South Welsh princes,
and became the inheritors of their local power. In North Wales the
Normans pushed across the Dee, and built great castles at Rhuddlan and
Flint and Montgomery, but they could not win the mountainous districts
about Snowdon, where the native chiefs still maintained a precarious
independence.
[Sidenote: =William obtains possession of Normandy.=]
Beyond the British seas William waged constant war with his brother
Robert, and always had the better of his elder, for the duke, though a
brave soldier, was a very incapable ruler, and lost by his shiftless
negligence all that he gained by his sword. He was forced in 1091
to cede several of his towns to William, and to promise to make him
his heir if he should die without male issue. But in 1096 the king
gained possession of the whole, and not a mere fraction, of the Norman
duchy. For Robert, seized with a sudden access of piety and a spirit
of wandering and unrest, vowed to go off to the First Crusade, which
was then being preached. In order to get the money to fit out a large
army, he unwisely mortgaged the whole of his lands to his grasping
brother for the very moderate sum of £6666. So William ruled Normandy
for a space, and Robert went off with half the baronage of Western
Christendom, to deliver the Holy Sepulchre from the Turks, and to
set up a Christian kingdom in Palestine. Among his companions were
the Etheling Eadgar, and many Englishmen more. The duke fought so
gallantly against the infidel that the Crusaders offered him the crown
of Jerusalem; but he would have none of it, and set his face homeward
after four years of absence (1099).
[Sidenote: =William's extortions.--Quarrel with the Church.--Anselm.=]
King William meanwhile had been ruling both England and Normandy with
a high hand. He and his favourite minister, Ralf Flambard, had been
devising all manner of new ways for raising money. When a tenant of
the crown died, they would not let his son or heir succeed to his
estate till he had paid an extortionate fine to the king. When a
bishop or an abbot died, they kept his place empty for months--or
even for years--and confiscated all the revenues of the see or abbey
during the vacancy. It was on this question that there broke out the
celebrated quarrel between William the Red and Archbishop Anselm. When
Lanfranc, his father's wise counsellor, died in 1089, the king left the
see of Canterbury unfilled for nearly four years, and embezzled its
revenues. But, being stricken with illness in 1093, he had a moment
of compunction, and filled up the archbishopric by appointing Anselm,
Abbot of Bec. Anselm, like his predecessor Lanfranc, was a learned
and pious Italian monk, who had governed his Norman abbey so well
that he won the respect of all his neighbours. He was only persuaded
with difficulty to accept the position of head of the English Church.
"Will you couple me, a poor weak old sheep, to that fierce young
bull the King of England?" he asked, when the bishops came to offer
him the primacy. But they forced the pastoral staff into his hands,
and hurried him off to be installed. When William recovered from his
sickness he began to ask large sums of money from Anselm, in return
for the piece of preferment that he had received. The king called
this exacting his feudal dues, but the archbishop called it _simony_,
the ancient crime of Simon Magus, who offered gold to the apostles
to buy spiritual privileges. He sent £500, but when the king asked
for more, utterly refused to comply. From this time forth there was
constant strife between William and Anselm, the first beginning of that
intermittent war between the crown and the Church which was to last
for more than two centuries. The archbishop was always withstanding
the king. When two popes disputed the tiara at Rome, William refused
to acknowledge either; but Anselm would not allow that there was
any doubt, did homage to Urban, and thus forced the king's hand by
committing England to one side in the dispute. When Urban sent over to
Anselm the _pall_,[9] the sign of his metropolitan jurisdiction over
the island, the king wished to deliver it to the archbishop with his
own hands. But Anselm vowed that this was receiving spiritual things
from a secular master, and would not take it save with his own hands
and from the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral. Nor did he cease
denouncing the ill living of the king and his courtiers, till William
grew so wrath that he would have slain him, had not all England revered
the fearless archbishop as a saint. At last he found a way of molesting
Anselm under form of law: he declared that the lands of the see of
Canterbury had not sent an adequate feudal contingent to his Welsh
wars, and imposed enormous fines on the archbishop for a breach of his
duties as a tenant-in-chief of the crown. Soon afterwards Anselm left
the realm, abandoning the king to his own devices as incorrigible, and
took his way to Pope Urban at Rome; nor did he return till William was
dead.
[Sidenote: =Death of William II.=]
The end of the Red King was sudden and tragic. He was hunting in the
New Forest--the great tract in Hampshire which his father had cleared
of its inhabitants and turned into one vast deer-park--and he had
chanced to draw apart from all his followers save Walter Tyrrel, one
of his chief favourites. A great hart came bounding between them. The
king loosed an arrow at it, and missed; "Shoot, Walter, shoot in the
devil's name!" he cried. Tyrrel shot in haste, but missed the stag and
pierced his master to the heart. Leaving William dead on the ground, he
galloped off to the shore and took ship for the continent. William's
corpse lay lost in the wood till a charcoal-burner came upon it next
day, and bore it in his cart to Winchester. Such was the strange
funeral procession of the lord of England and Normandy. William's death
grieved none save his favourites and boon companions, for his manner of
living was hateful to all good men, and his taxes and extortions had
turned from him the hearts of all his subjects (August 2, 1100).
[Sidenote: =Election of Henry I.--His charter.=]
When the throne of England was thus suddenly left vacant, it remained
to be seen who would become William's successor. His elder brother
Robert, whom the baronage would have preferred, because of his
slackness and easy ways, was still far away, on his return journey
from the Crusade. But Henry, his younger brother, was on the spot, and
knew how to take advantage of the opportunity. Hastily assembling the
few members of the Great Council who were near at hand, he prevailed
upon them by bribes or promises to elect him king, and was proclaimed
at Winchester only three days after William's death, and long before
the news that the throne was vacant had reached the turbulent barons
of the North and West. After his proclamation at Winchester, Henry
moved to London, and there was crowned. He did his best to win the good
opinion of all his subjects by issuing a charter of promises to the
nation, wherein he bound himself to abide by "the laws of Edward the
Confessor," that is, the ancient customs of England, and not to ask of
any man more than his due share of taxation--agreeing to abandon the
arbitrary and illegal fines on succession to heritages which William
II. had always exacted. He then proceeded to fill up all the abbeys and
bishoprics which William had kept vacant for his own profit, to recall
Anselm from his exile, and to cast into prison Ralf Flambard,[10] the
chief instrument of his brother's oppression and extortions.
[Sidenote: =War with the baronage.=]
Henry's conciliatory measures were not taken a moment too soon. He had
but just time to announce his good intentions, and to give some earnest
of his desire to carry them out, when he found himself involved in a
desperate civil war. The barons had broken loose, headed by Robert
of Belesme, the turbulent Earl of Shrewsbury, and they were set on
making Duke Robert King of England. Robert, indeed, had just returned
from Palestine, and had retaken possession of his duchy shortly after
his brother's death. He planned an invasion of England to assist his
partisans, and began to collect an army.
But the new king was too much for his shiftless brother. When Robert
landed at Portsmouth, he bought him off for a moment by offering him a
tribute of £3000, an irresistible bribe to the impecunious duke, and
then used his opportunity to crush the rebellious barons. The fate
of the rising was settled by the next summer. Gathering together the
English shire levies and those of the baronage who were faithful to
him, the king marched against Robert of Belesme and his associates.
The successful sieges of Arundel and Bridgenorth decided the war:
Robert was forced to surrender, and granted his life on condition of
forfeiting his estates and leaving the realm. "Rejoice, King Henry, for
now may you truly say that you are lord of England," cried the English
levies to their monarch, "since you have put down Robert of Belesme,
and driven him out of the bounds of your kingdom" (1101).
[Sidenote: =Marriage of Henry to Matilda of Scotland.=]
So Henry retained the crown that he had seized, and set to work to
strengthen his position in the land. He did his best to conciliate
the native English by marrying, five months after his accession, a
princess of the old royal house of King Alfred. The lady was Eadgyth,
or Matilda as the Normans re-named her, the daughter of Malcolm, the
King of Scotland and of Margaret, the sister of Eadgar the Etheling.
So the issue of King Henry, and all his descendants who sat on the
English throne, had the blood of the ancient kings of Wessex in their
veins. Some of the Normans mocked at this marriage, and at the anxiety
which Henry showed to please his native-born subjects, and nicknamed
him "Godric," an English name which sounded uncouth to their own ears.
But the king heeded not, when he got so much solid advantage from his
conduct, and the prosperity of his reign justified his wisdom.
[Sidenote: =Fusion of English and Norman races.=]
Henry showed himself his father's true son, reproducing the good as
well as the evil qualities of the Conqueror. He had the advantage
over his father of having been born in England, and of living in
a generation when the first bitterness of the strife of races was
beginning to be assuaged. If he was selfish and hard-hearted and often
cruel, yet he dispensed even-handed justice, curbed all oppressors,
and kept to the letter of the law. He made so little difference
between Norman and Englishman that the two races soon began to melt
together: intermarriage between them became common in all classes save
the highest nobility; the English thegns and yeomen began to christen
their children by Norman names, while the Anglo-Normans began to learn
English, and to draw apart from their kindred beyond the sea in the
old duchy. Thirty years after Henry's death, it was remarked by a
contemporary writer that no man could say that he was either Norman
or English, so much had the two races become intermingled. Much of
the benefit of this happy union must be laid to the credit of Henry
himself, who both set the example of wedding a wife of English blood,
and treated all his men of either race as equal before his eyes. Nor
was he averse to granting a larger measure of liberty to his subjects:
his charter to the city of London, issued in 1100, was a very liberal
grant of self-government to the burghers of his capital, and served
as a model ever after to his successors when they gave privileges to
their town-dwelling liegemen. He allowed the Londoners to raise their
own taxes, to choose their own sheriffs, and to make bye-laws for their
municipal government.
[Sidenote: =Character of Henry.=]
But Henry's character had a bad side: he was at times as ruthlessly
cruel as his father; he punished not only rebellion, but theft and
offences against the forest laws, by death, or blinding, or mutilation.
Once, when he found that the workmen of his mints had conspired
together to issue base coins, he struck off the right hand of every
moneyer in England. We shall see that he was capable of holding his
own brother in close prison for thirty years. He was as grasping
and avaricious as his predecessor William, though he was much less
arbitrary and harsh in his exactions. His private life, though not a
patent scandal like that of the Red King, was open to grave reproach.
Above all things he was selfish; his own advantage was his aim, and
if he governed the land wisely and justly, it was mainly because he
thought that wisdom and justice were the best policy for himself.
[Sidenote: =Strength of the monarchy.--=]
Henry's long reign (1100-1135) was more noteworthy for the tendencies
which were at work in it, than for the particular events which mark
its individual years. It is mainly important as the time of the silent
growth together of Norman and English, and the stereotyping of the
constitution on a strong monarchical basis. In his day the king was
everything, and the Great Council of tenants-in-chief was no check on
him, and did little more than register his decrees. If his successors
had all been like himself, England might have become a pure despotism,
though one well ordered and--considering the lights of the times--not
oppressively administered.
[Sidenote: =Fresh disputes with the Church.=]
The strife between the monarchy and the Church, which had first taken
shape in the quarrel of William Rufus and Anselm, continued in Henry's
time, but raged on a new point of issue. When the archbishop returned
from exile, he refused to take the usual oath of homage, and to be
reinvested in his see by the new king, alleging that, as a spiritual
person, he owed fealty to God alone, and received all his power and
authority from God, and not from the king. This new and strange
doctrine he had picked up in Rome during his exile: the papacy was at
this time putting forth those monstrous claims to dominion over kings
and princes with which it had been inspired a few years before by the
imperious Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII.). Henry could only reply that,
though the archbishop was a spiritual person, he was also a great
tenant-in-chief, holding vast estates, and that for them he must do
homage to the crown, like all other feudal landowners. Anselm refused,
and there the matter stood still, for neither would yield, though they
treated each other courteously enough, and did not indulge in the
angry recrimination which had been wont to take place when Rufus was
in Henry's place. Anselm even went into exile again for a space. But
at last he and the king met at Bec, in Normandy, in 1106, and hit on a
wise compromise, which they agreed to apply both to Anselm's case and
to all future investitures of bishops. The newly elected prelate was to
do homage, as a feudal tenant, for the estates of his see; but he was
not to receive the symbols of his spiritual authority from the king,
but was to take up his ring and crozier from the high altar of his
cathedral, as direct gifts from God. This decision served as a model
for the agreement between the Pope and the empire, when fourteen years
later the "Contest about Investiture," as this widespread dispute was
called, was brought to an end on the continent.
[Sidenote: =Wars with Duke Robert.--Partial conquest of Normandy.=]
The chief incidents in the foreign relations of Henry's reign are
his long wars with his shiftless brother Robert, and afterwards with
Robert's son, William Clito. He had never forgiven the duke for his
attempt to dethrone him by the aid of rebels in 1099; nor did the duke
ever forgive him for having so promptly seized England at the moment
of the death of William II. The peace which they had made in 1100 did
not endure, and a long series of hostilities at last culminated in the
battle of Tinchebrai (1106). Here Henry, who had invaded Normandy,
completely defeated his brother and took him prisoner. He sent the
unfortunate Robert to strict confinement in Cardiff Castle, and kept
him there all the days of his life. For the rest of his reign Henry
ruled Normandy as well as England, but his dominion in the duchy was
very precarious. The baronage hated his strong hand and his strict
enforcement of the law. They often rebelled against him, but he never
failed to subdue them. When William, surnamed Clito, the son of the
imprisoned duke, grew towards man's estate, he had no difficulty in
finding partisans in Normandy who would do their best to win him
back his father's heritage. Aided by the King of France, who was one
of Henry's most consistent enemies, William Clito made several bold
attempts to deprive his uncle of Normandy. He did not succeed, but
presently he became Count of Flanders, to which he had a claim through
his grandmother Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror. Possessed
of this rich country, he grew to be a more serious danger to the
English king, but he fell in battle in 1128, while striving with some
Flemish rebels, and by his death Henry's position became unassailable.
[Sidenote: =Marriage of Princess Matilda to Geoffrey of Anjou.=]
The King of England was troubled with many other enemies beside William
Clito. Lewis VI. of France, and Fulk, Count of Anjou, were always
molesting him. But he gained or lost little by his long and dreary
border wars with them. The one noteworthy consequence of this strife
was that, to confirm a peace with Count Fulk, the king married his two
children to the son and daughter of the lord of Anjou. First, his son
William was wedded to the count's daughter (1119), and some years later
the Lady Matilda was married to Geoffrey, the count's son and heir
(1127).
[Sidenote: =Death of Henry's son.--Matilda heiress to the throne.=]
The importance of this latter marriage lay in the fact that Prince
William had died in the intervening space, and that Matilda--a widowed
princess whose first husband had been the Emperor Henry V.--was now the
King of England's sole heiress. The end of her brother had been strange
and tragic: he was following his father from Normandy to England, when
a drunken skipper ran his vessel upon the reef of Catteville, only five
miles from the Norman shore. The prince was hurried by his followers
into the only boat that the ship possessed, and might have escaped, had
he not seen that his half-sister, the Countess of Perche,[11] had been
left behind. He bade the oarsmen put back, but when they reached the
ship, a crowd of panic-stricken passengers sprang down into the boat
and swamped it. The prince was drowned, and with him his half-brother
Richard, his half-sister the Countess of Perche, the Earl of Chester,
and many of the chief persons of the realm. Only one sailor-lad
survived to tell the sad tale of the White Ship. When the news of the
death of his only legitimate son reached the king, he was prostrated
by it for many days, and it was said that he was never seen to smile
again, though he lived for fifteen years after the disaster. But, if
the chronicles speak true, the death of William was more of a loss to
his father than to the realm, for they report him to have been a proud
and cruel youth, who bid fair to reproduce some of the evil qualities
of his uncle William Rufus.
Henry was determined that his realm should pass at his death to his
daughter Matilda, and not to any of his nephews, the sons of William
the Conqueror's daughters. But he knew that it would be a hard matter
to secure her succession, for England had never been ruled by a
queen-regnant, and it was very doubtful if the Great Council would
elect a woman. Moreover, the barons grudged that she should have been
married to a foreign count, for they had hoped that the king would have
given her hand to one of his own earls. Henry endeavoured to support
Matilda's cause by constraining all the chief men of the realm, and
his own kinsfolk, to take an oath to choose her as queen after his
death. But he well knew that oaths sworn under compulsion are lightly
esteemed, and must have foreseen that on his death his daughter would
have great difficulty in asserting her claims.
[Sidenote: =Complete conquest of South Wales.--Scotland.=]
But, trusting his daughter's fate to the future, Henry persevered
in his life's work, and left his kingdom behind him at his death in
1135 with a full treasury, an obedient baronage, and largely extended
borders. Not only had he won Normandy, but he had completed the
conquest of South Wales, and established large colonies of English and
Flemings about Pembroke and in the peninsula of Gower. With his three
brothers-in-law, who reigned in Scotland one after another, he dwelt
on friendly terms; they did him homage, and he left them unmolested.
They were wise princes who knew the value of peace, and under them the
Scotch kingdom advanced in civilization and wealth, and grew more and
more assimilated to its great southern neighbour.
On the 1st of December, 1135, King Henry died. Though a selfish and
unscrupulous man, he had been a good king, and the troubles which
followed his death soon taught the English how much they had owed to
his strong and ruthless hand.
[Sidenote: =Stephen elected king.=]
Immediately on the arrival of the news of his death, the Great Council
met at London. It was soon evident that many of its members thought
little of the oath that they had sworn ten years before. One after
another they declared that the reign of a queen would be unprecedented
and intolerable, and that a man must be chosen to rule over England.
Of the male members of the royal house the one who was best known in
England was Stephen of Blois, one of the late king's nephews, and the
son of Adela, a daughter of William I., who had wedded the Count of
Blois and Champagne. He had been the late king's favourite kinsman,
and had taken the oath to uphold Matilda's rights before any of the
lay members of the council. Now he lightly forgot his vow, and stood
forward as a candidate for the crown. Matilda was absent abroad, and
her husband Geoffrey of Anjou was much disliked, so that it was not
difficult for Henry, Bishop of Winchester, Stephen's younger brother,
to prevail on the majority of the magnates of the realm to reject her
claim. In spite of the murmurings of a large minority, Stephen was
chosen as king, and duly crowned at London, whose citizens liked him
well, and hailed his accession with shouts of joy.
[Sidenote: =Aims of the baronage.--Civil war begins.=]
They were soon to change their tone, for ere long Stephen began to
show that he was too weak for the task that he had undertaken. He was
a good-natured, impulsive, volatile man, who could never refuse a
friend's request, or keep an unspent penny in his purse. Save personal
courage, he had not one of the qualities of a successful king. The
baronage soon took the measure of Stephen's abilities, and saw that the
time had come for them to make a bold strike for that anarchical feudal
independence which was their dream. The name and cause of Matilda gave
them an excellent excuse for throwing up their allegiance, and doing
every man that which was right in his own eyes. The king put down a few
spasmodic rebellions, but more kept breaking out, till in the third
year of his reign a general explosion took place (1138). The cause of
the Lady Matilda was taken up by two honest partisans, her uncle David,
King of Scotland, and her half-brother Robert, Earl of Gloucester;[12]
but these two were aided by a host of turbulent self-seeking barons,
who craved nothing save an excuse for defying the king and plundering
their neighbours.
[Sidenote: =The Scottish invasion.--Battle of the Standard.=]
The Scot was the first to move; he crossed the Tweed with a great
army, giving out that he came to make King Stephen grant him justice
in the matter of the counties of Huntingdon and Northampton, which he
claimed as the heir of the long-dead Earl Waltheof.[13] But the wild
Highland clans that followed David ravaged Northumbria so cruelly that
the barons and yeomen of Yorkshire turned out in great wrath to strike
a blow for King Stephen. At Northallerton they barred the way of the
invaders, mustering under Thurstan, Archbishop of York, and the two
sheriffs of the county. They placed in their midst a car bearing the
consecrated standards of the three Yorkshire saints--St. Peter of York,
St. Wilfred of Ripon, and St. John of Beverley. Around it they stood
in serried ranks, and beat off again and again the wild charges of the
Highlanders and Galloway men who formed the bulk of King David's army.
More than 10,000 Scots fell, and Yorkshire was saved; but the war was
only just beginning (1138).
A few months after the Battle of the Standard the English partisans
of Matilda took arms, headed by her brother, Earl Robert. Gloucester,
Bristol, Hereford, Exeter, and most of the south-west of England at
once fell into their hands. Stephen did his best to make head against
them, by the aid of such of the baronage as adhered to him, and of
great bodies of plundering mercenaries raised in Flanders and France.
He bought off the opposition of the Scots by ceding Northumberland and
Cumberland to Henry, the son of King David, who was to hold them as his
vassal, and for the rest of Stephen's reign the two northern counties
were in Scottish hands.
[Sidenote: =Victory of Matilda at Lincoln.=]
But at this critical moment the king ruined his own cause by a quarrel
with the Church. He threw into prison the Bishops of Salisbury
and Lincoln, because they refused to surrender their castles into
his keeping, and treated them so roughly that every ecclesiastic
in the realm--even including his own brother, Henry, Bishop of
Winchester--took part against him (1139). Soon afterward Matilda landed
in Sussex, and all the southern counties fell away to her. After
much irregular fighting, the two parties came to a pitched battle
at Lincoln. In spite of the feats of personal bravery which Stephen
displayed, he was utterly defeated, and fell into the hands of his
enemies (1141).
The cause of Matilda now seemed triumphant. She had captured her enemy,
and most of the realm fell into her hands. She was saluted as "Lady of
England" at Winchester, and there received the homage of the Archbishop
of Canterbury, and most of the barons and bishops of the land. She
then moved to London, to be crowned; but in the short space since her
triumph she had shown herself so haughty, impracticable, and vindictive
that men's minds were already turning against her. Most especially did
she provoke Stephen's old partisans, by refusing to release him on
his undertaking to quit the kingdom and formally resign his claims to
the crown. This refusal led to the continuation of the war: Maud of
Boulogne, Stephen's wife, rallied the wrecks of his party and continued
to make resistance, and on the news of her approach the Londoners
commenced to stir. Their new mistress had celebrated her advent by
imposing a crushing _tallage_, or money-fine, on the city, and in wrath
at her extortion the citizens rose in arms and chased her out of the
place, before she had even been crowned.
[Sidenote: =Reverses of Matilda.--Feudal anarchy.=]
The unhappy civil war--which for a moment had seemed at an end--now
commenced again. Matilda steadily lost ground, and had to release
Stephen in exchange for her brother, Robert of Gloucester, who had
fallen into the hands of the king's party. She was besieged first at
Winchester, then at Oxford, and on each occasion escaped with great
difficulty from her adversaries. At Oxford she had to be let down by
a rope at night from the castle keep, to thread her way through the
hostile outposts, and then to walk on foot many miles over the snow.
The baronage were so well content with the practical independence
which they enjoyed during the civil war, that they had no desire to
see it end. They changed from side to side with the most indecent
shamelessness, only taking care that at each change they got a full
price for their treachery. Geoffrey de Mandeville, the wicked Earl of
Essex, was perhaps the worst of them; he sold each party in turn, and
finally fought for his own hand, taking no heed of king or queen, and
only seeking to plunder his neighbours and annex their lands. He had
many imitators; the last pages of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which
finally comes to an end in Stephen's reign, are filled with a picture
of the hopeless misery of the land. Every shire, it laments, was full
of castles, and every castle was filled with devils and evil men. The
lords took any weaker neighbours who were thought to have money, and
put them in dungeons, and tortured them with unutterable devices.
"The ancient martyrs were not so ill treated, for they hanged men by
the thumbs, or by the head, and smoked them with foul smoke; they
put knotted strings about their heads, and twisted them till they bit
into the brain. They put them in dungeons with adders and toads, or
shut them into close boxes filled with sharp stones, and pressed them
there till their bones were broken. Many thousands they killed with
hunger and torment, and that lasted the nineteen winters while Stephen
was king. In those days, if three or four men came riding towards a
township, all the township fled hastily before them, believing them to
be robbers."
[Sidenote: =Treaty of Wallingford.--Death of Stephen.=]
So fared England for many years, till in 1153 a peace was patched up at
Wallingford. Matilda had quitted England long before, and her party was
now led by her young son, Henry of Anjou, who had come over in 1152 to
take her place. Stephen was now old and broken by constant campaigning;
he had lately lost his son Eustace, whom he had destined to succeed
him; and when it was proposed to him that he should hold the crown for
his own life, but make Count Henry his heir, he closed with the offer.
Less than a year later he died, leaving England in the worst plight
that ever she knew since the days of Aethelred the Ill-counselled. For
the king's mandate no longer ran over the land, and every baron was
ruling for himself. Northumberland and Cumberland were in the hands of
the Scots, the Welsh were harrying the border counties, and Yorkshire
had been ravaged in 1153 by the last Viking raid recorded in English
history. It was time that a strong man should pick up the broken
sceptre of William the Conqueror.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] A narrow tippet of white wool, fastened by four black cross-headed
pins, such as we see in the shield of arms of the see of Canterbury.
[10] William had made Ralf Bishop of Durham in reward for his evil
doing--a typical instance of his cynical disregard for public and
private morality.
[11] This lady was a natural daughter of the king, and not his
legitimate issue by Queen Matilda.
[12] One of the late king's illegitimate sons, to whom he had given the
earldom of Gloucester.
[13] See p. 77.