BOOK VI. CHAPTER I. STEPHEN OF BLOIS. A.D. 1135 TO A.D. 1154. CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. FRANCE. Louis VI., the Fat; Louis VII., the Young. POPES.-Celestine II.; Lucius II.; Eugenius III.; Anastasius IV. § 1. Accession of STEPHEN. Claims of Matilda to the throne. Constitution of feudalism opposed to a female succession.-§ 2. Measures pursued by Stephen to secure the crown. His coronation.. $3. Despotism and anarchy of Stephen's reign.-§ 4. The great coalitions formed against him.-§ 5. David of Scotland enters into hostilities against Stephen. Hatred of the Scotch towards the Norman race. Robert Bruce. Battle of the Standard, and great slaughter of the Scotch.-§ 6. Influence of the clergy. Punishment inflicted by Stephen.-§ 7. Matilda arrives in England. State of public feeling. General anarchy and oppression.-§ 8. Stephen's forces defeated, and himself taken prisoner. Matilda obtains the crown. Flight of Matilda, and her departure from the kingdom. 9. Prince Henry Plantagenet, son of Matilda. Treaty entered into, by which Henry was acknowledged as Stephen's successor.§ 10. Death of Stephen. § 1. WHEN the reader remembers all the oaths of allegiance to the Empress Maud, all the care bestowed by the politic Henry to secure her accession, and the farther advantage she possessed in being the mother of three hopeful sons, he is surprised at seeing the name Stephen as the heading to the succeeding reign. Who was Stephen, and by what means did he manage to disappoint the wisdom of Henry and the ambition of Matilda ? A little inquiry will moderate our A.D. 1135.] STEPHEN AND MATILDA. 157 surprise, and show how naturally the interruption to the direct succession occurred. Stephen was the son of Adela, the daughter of the Conqueror. He was therefore nephew of the late king. His father was Count of Blois, one of the petty feudatories of France, and his life would probably have been passed in the obscure contentions of a small principality if the greater theatre of England and Normandy had not been opened to his ambition by the favour of the kinsman whose daughter he was about to supplant. Henry, indeed, spared no pains to elevate him and his brothers to the highest point. Stephen was handsome, courageous, and gay; so winning in manner that he was a favourite with the mob, so gallant in action that he was a pattern to the knights, his partial uncle procured for him the hand of the daughter and heiress of the Count of Boulogne, and enriched him with manors and territories sufficient to do honour to the lofty station of his bride. But she was richer in the eyes of the English with the hereditary blood of their ancient kings than with all the estates of which her husband was lord. For she was the niece of David of Scotland and of Henry's first wife, Matilda, the niece of Edgar Atheling; and as if further to endear her to the regretful heart of the oppressed, she herself was known by the name of Maud. Henry had been equally lavish in his bestowal of ecclesiastical wealth on the brother of Stephen, who was at this time Bishop of Winchester, and the most powerful churchman in the realm. The case of a female succession had not occurred in all our Saxon or Norman annals. The constitution of feudalism was directly contrary to it, as it was founded on the idea of the indissoluble union between property and the sword; and when the more vigorous spirits among the nobility compared the competitors for the crown, the choice could not be long and difficult between the grandson of the Conqueror by a daughter, and the granddaughter of the Conqueror by a son. § 2. The throne was empty, and the strong man was near to take it. For Stephen crossed over from Boulogne when he heard of his uncle's death, and though rejected by the castellans of Dover and Canterbury, was received with acclamations of triumph as he rode into London, and took up his residence in the Tower. Henry of Winchester was busy in his brother's cause. He seized the royal treasures, as the Beauclerc had done, and scattered his official curses on all the supporters of the empress. With money in hand, and the most active of prelates by his side, Stephen found little difficulty in procuring an appearance of election to the throne by the voice of Church and people. On the 26th of December he was solemnly crowned by William Corboil, Archbishop of Canterbury, and in a short time afterwards had the gratification of receiving the ratification of the pope, who accepted his accession as "a near relation of the deceased king," and adopted him as "a son of the blessed apostle Peter and of the holy Roman Church." § 3. And now for nineteen years were poured out upon England all the woes and miseries of despotism and anarchy combined. It is impossible to get a clear view of that most melancholy and tempestuous time, for its deepest characteristic is darkness and confusion. The main struggle seemed to be for the crown of England between Stephen and his cousin Maud; but every mile of all the land was alive with war and rivalry. Baron assaulted baron, and peasant life was considered of no value on either side. In the first glow of his success Stephen had promised a golden age to all portions of his subjects; privileges, wealth, and independence to the nobles; protection, peace, and prosperity to the people; and crowned all his agreeable obligations to the future by the usual undertaking to restore the laws and customs as they existed in the good old times. The feudal chiefs availed themselves of his permission to build castles and fortresses on their estates, and thousands of square-towered, narrow-windowed, A.D. 1137.] ROBERT, EARL OF GLOUCESTER. 159 cruel-looking residences were studded over all the kingdom. Agriculture could not prosper in the midst of the lawless incursions of freebooters of noble blood; and trade was at a standstill from the insecurity of the roads. It is likely that the great assemblages of armed cavaliers and trained bowmen around the standards of the recognised leaders of the war were less hurtful than the miscellaneous violences which were perpetually going on in the intervals falsely called peace; and therefore we hail the appearance upon the scene of Robert, Earl of Gloucester-the illegitimate brother of Matilda, and endowed with many of the sterner qualities of the race he sprang from-as giving the struggle a definite aim and object, and imposing some restraint on the wilfulness of knights and earls by the necessity of military organization and martial law. § 4. Stephen considered the greater part of his difficulties removed when Gloucester came over in 1137, and swore fealty to him as his liege lord. If the oath was clogged with the condition that the obligation was only binding so long as the liberties of the kingdom were preserved, the king was too much gratified to perceive the qualification. He restored him to his estates, and relied on his protestations of gratitude for his future submission and support. But Gloucester had other views. He roused the enmity of the disappointed nobles against the gay and trustful king, promising them great things if the rightful heiress had her own. Hugh Bigod seized Norwich castle, Baldwin de Rivers raised all his vassals, and held possession of Exeter, and David, the Scottish king, was persuaded to promise assistance to the disinherited Matilda. Relying on all these alliances, Gloucester retired from England, and sent a formal withdrawal of his homage; and Matilda, panting for revenge and power, held herself ready to cross the Channel, and lead her adherents in the field. But Stephen, who was equally at home in the feast and the battle, paralyzed his enemies by the rapidity of his move ments. He drove de Rivers from Exeter, and other malcontents from the castles they had seized or built. He passed over to Normandy, and tried, by lavishing King Henry's treasure on the barons of that land, to attach them to his cause. But the money was quickly spent, the object ungained, and he came back to England, and excited his partisans to resistance of the great coalition which by this time was ready to declare against him. § 5. David of Scotland, at the head of all the unruly dwellers in the north-the men of the Isles and the lately subdued Highlanders of the west-crossed from his territories of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and fixed his tents in Yorkshire. His lowland arrays were as Anglo-Saxon as the inhabitants of Durham, with whom they were going to fight. His body-guard of mounted gentlemen was as Norman as the leaders of the opposing host. But the enmity between the nations was bitter and irreconcilable. The Highlanders and men of the Isles were barbarians who nourished a hereditary rage against the southerns as usurpers of the valleys and plains where their ancestors had lived; the Lowlanders hated the English for the sufferings their incursions had caused; the Scottish gentry were principally the chiefs of Norman families who had been expelled from their estates by William or his sons, and had been presented with their present holdings by the generosity of the Scottish kings. Frightful cruelties marked the approach of the invading army. Norman, Saxon, or Dane felt equally the edge of the Caledonian sword. Priests and peasants were mingled in the same ruin; and before the undisciplined masses had crossed the Tees, all the north of England forgot its party differences, caring neither for Matilda nor Stephen, and offered one great and solid bulwark against the advancing tide. Thurstan-who from his name must have been Saxon in descent-the Archbishop of York, stimu lated the patriotism of his flock by fiery declamations against the unbelieving Gael. He brought out the statues and |