chapels. They had no coloured glass and no bell-tower, and by their white dress they endeavoured to indicate they were not as the blackrobed Benedictines. This effervescence of new monastic life seems to have had a stimulating effect upon other orders; and William of Malmesbury, himself a Benedictine, tells us that the Cistercians were 'a mirror to the diligent, a goad to the negligent, a model to all' Situated as abbeys were in flourishing towns, or by the side of a Norman castle, and acting as hotels where great and small, king and palmer, found accommodation for the night, an observant monk found himself in touch with every movement of his time; and one of the most remarkable proofs of the reality of the better life springing up under Henry, and a strong proof of how rapidly Saxon and Norman were mingling into one nationality, is the revival of an entirely new interest in the history of England. The Revival of only survivor of Alfred's scheme of a regularly kept History. chronicle was that preserved in the abbey of Worcester. About the year 1120 a copy of this was made for the use of the monks of Peterborough; and while the original has been lost, the copy remains, and was continued by the Peterborough monks in English till the year 1154. Besides this, Henry, archdeacon of Huntingdon, began about the same year to collect materials for a complete history of England; and William of Malmesbury, the greatest historian since Bede, was William of writing his Acts of the Bishops and his Acts of the English MalmesKings, and brought his history down to the events of his own time. Henry himself was a scholar. He spoke English, French, and Latin. His children were well educated; and his illegitimate son, Robert of Gloucester, was a personal friend of William of Malmesbury. The Latin classics were by no means unknown. One copy, at least, of Euclid found its way to England. bury. It is from the reign of Henry 1. that we can trace the first beginnings of the university of Oxford. Henry built a palace at Beaumont, on the north side of the town, and it is possible that his presence Beginnings attracted learned men. At any rate, it is certain that of Oxford. between 1117 and 1121 Thibaut d'Estampes, a learned Norman, was teaching letters to some sixty to one hundred scholars. In 1133 Robert Pullein, afterwards a cardinal, gave lectures on the Holy Scriptures. The name of another teacher is also known-Robert of Cricklade; and in the following reign Vacarius further enlarged the course of studies by lecturing on the civil law. From this time forward Oxford appears to have had an uninterrupted succession of scholars and teachers. Altogether the England of Henry 1. exhibited in almost every direction a hopeful promise both of constitutional order, national feeling, and material and intellectual prosperity, which is the best record of the success of its scholarly sovereign. CHAPTER IV STEPHEN: 1135-1154 Born c. 1094; married, 1124, Matilda of Boulogne. Stephen's success-Contest for the Crown-Battles of Northallerton and Lincoln -Siege of Oxford-Effects of the War - Henry of Anjou. WHEN her father died in Normandy, Matilda was in Anjou ; and she and her husband, instead of hurrying to England and securing it at all hazards, made the fatal mistake of making the first attempt upon Mistakes of Normandy. If they thought that in consequence of the Matilda. late king's arrangement the succession of Matilda was a matter of course, they were completely mistaken; for a rival was already in the field, and acting with such promptitude that the crown of England had slipped from Matilda's reach almost before her movement in Normandy had begun. This rival was Stephen of Blois, third son of the Conqueror's clever daughter Adela and her husband the count of Blois, count of Mortain by gift of Henry, and of Boulogne by right of his wife, the Character of beiress of the younger Eustace. Stephen was a man of Stephen. whom it might be said that he would have been thought to have had every qualification for kingship if he had never reigned. He was now about forty years of age, handsome and vigorous in body, and a master of all chivalric exercises. His courage was unimpeachable, and his personal character excellent. His wife was the daughter of Christina, younger sister of the good Queen Matilda; so his children, like those of Henry, represented the old English line. Unlike Matilda, who was barely known to the English people, he had been bred in Henry's court, lived all his life in England, and had been formally acknowledged to be, after the king of Scots, the first baron of the realm. He seemed just the man to be an ideal English king in every way superior to his rival Matilda, by birth a woman—and no distaff had yet reigned over the chivalry of Western Europe-by education a German, by marriage an Angevin, who represented, moreover, in the eyes of the baronage the stern system of repression and exaction as practised by Ranulf Flambard and Roger of Salisbury. It was not, however, by the nobles that Stephen was first chosen as king. Sailing at once from Boulogne, he was accepted with enthusiasm His prompt by the men of London; and, their aid being secured, he made action. his way to Winchester, where he was gladly received by his brother Henry, the bishop, and put in possession of the king's treasure. Already the confusion incident on the cessation of the king's peace, at the death of the king, showed the necessity for an immediate decision; and, actuated probably by this, Roger of Salisbury, the justiciar and official representative of law and order, threw in his lot with Stephen, bringing with him his nephew Nigel, bishop of Ely, the treasurer, and his illegitimate son Roger-le-poer, the chancellor. William, archbishop of Canterbury, performed the coronation; so that, with the townspeople, the officials, and the church on his side, Stephen's position seemed well assured. Some of the barons hesitated longer, especially Robert of Gloucester, eldest son of the late king; but eventually Stephen won them by lavish promises, and the Norman barons, thankful to escape from an Angevin ruler, followed suit. For a time it seemed as if Matilda was not to have a single open adherent, either in England or in Normandy. Crowned Before long, however, the real unfitness of Stephen for his post begau to show itself. He was too lavish both of promises and gifts. Besides Unfitness of promising generally to observe the good laws and customs Stephen. of Henry and Edward the Confessor, which he did in two charters issued at his coronation, and at the holding of his first council, he also recklessly diminished his wealth by lavish grants of lands, and all without winning the real affection of the recipients or binding them to him by obligation. A favourite maxim of the Empress Matilda, 'Never glut a hawk if you wish him to serve you,' may well have been derived from observation of Stephen's error. David, King of Scots, The first person to declare in Matilda's favour was David, king of Scots; but Stephen bought him off for a time by the grant of the earldom of Carlisle, with the county of Cumberland for his son Henry. But in 1138 he again took up arms, and, after declares for cruelly ravaging Northumberland and Durham, made his way into Yorkshire. By this time, however, he was not Stephen's only opponent: Robert of Gloucester and Miles of Hereford Matilda. Battle of were in rebellion, and Stephen was amply occupied in a series of sieges entailed by the need of bringing them and their friends to reason. Fortunately, the north was in good hands. Archbishop Thurstan of York and Walter Lespec, the founder of Rievaulx abbey, assembled the northerners at York; and, the aged Thurstan being left behind, Walter led them out to Cowmoor, two miles beyond Northallerton, and there, at the spot where the Hambledon Hills come near to the lower spurs of the Pennine range on the west, they awaited the onset of the Scots. The whole army fought on foot round a car on which, as a standard, were placed on masts the sacred banners of NorthallerSt. Peter, St. Wilfrid, and St. John of Beverley. The charge of the Scots was fierce and well sustained, but they could make no impression on the solid array of spearmen, while the archers, already beginning to take their place in English warfare, sent their shafts with fatal effect among the unarmoured Scots. In the end the Scots withdrew, leaving more than a thousand dead, and all their spoil and baggage; and for nearly two hundred years the memory of the Battle of the Standard saved Yorkshire from invasion. into ton. Stephen quarrels with Roger of Meanwhile, Stephen's military skill had served him well in the south. Bristol was unassailable, but Hereford and Shrewsbury fell into his hands. His queen captured Dover; Robert and Miles fled the country; and the hanging of some of the garrisons taught a severe lesson to the rest. Altogether, the year 1138 was Stephen's fortunate year. Its successor, 1139, was as unfortunate. Hitherto, Stephen had wisely kept on good terms with Roger of Salisbury, in whose hands rested the administration of the country, and had even granted his most exorbitant requests; but in a fatal moment he quarrelled with Roger and his family, seized their castles of Salisbury, Ely, and Devizes, and flung them, bishops as they were, prison. Nothing more foolish could well have been done. Roger threw the whole administrative machine out of gear; imprisonment of a bishop, which might have been tolerated from the Conqueror, was not to be endured from his grandson, and had the effect of throwing Henry of Winchester and the whole influence of the church on the side of the empress. On August 29th Henry summoned his brother to appear before a church council to answer for his conduct; and, though Stephen tried to save himself by a humiliating submission, Matilda and her brother Robert landed at Arundel on the last day of September, where they were received by Adela, the late king's widow. Robert soon passed on to Bristol; but Matilda was for some weeks besieged at Arundel by Stephon The fall of while the Matilda arrives in England. |