On Henry’s death, according to the oath of the nobles, Matilda, late Empress, now wife of Geoffrey of Anjou, should have become Duchess of Normandy and Queen of England. But the principle of hereditary succession was by no means firmly established; a female sovereign was not desirable for a feudal country; her child Henry was an infant; and the nobles held that the conditions of their oath of fealty had been broken when Matilda had married a foreigner. There was therefore almost a unanimous feeling that one or other of the Princes of Blois, grandsons of the Conqueror, Theobald the elder brother, or Stephen, Count of Mortain and Boulogne, should ascend the throne. Steps were being taken in Normandy to induce Theobald to come forward, when news was brought to him that the superior quickness of his brother Stephen had already secured the crown in England, where, though not without some demur, the influence of the Church, headed by his brother Henry of Winchester, had secured him success.

There followed a period of twenty years without a parallel in the history of England. It was the only time during which the feudal baronage assumed that position of practical independence which it was always aiming at, which it frequently enjoyed abroad, but which the wise management and strong government of the Conqueror and his two sons had rendered impossible in England. The weak title of the King, and the constantly urged claim of the Empress, joined with the personal character of Stephen, who seems to have been unable to refuse a request, afforded an opportunity to the barons of asserting virtual independence and fighting for their own interests, while nominally upholding one or other of the claimants to the throne. The same causes affected the Church, which was now able to make good that commanding position which the legislation of the Conqueror had given it, although up to this time the strong hand of the King had rendered the position worthless. The only organized power in the midst of anarchy, it was enabled to use its influence to the full. It was the Church that set Stephen on the throne; it was his quarrel with the bishops which lit up the civil war in England; the success of the Empress was of no avail till she was accepted by the Church; her attack upon Henry of Winchester was the signal for her discomfiture; it was the mediation of the Church which ultimately produced a cessation of the war.

The facts of the reign are few and in themselves unimportant. To the growth of the constitution it added nothing. It is nevertheless interesting as exhibiting the effects of unbridled feudalism, and as preparing the way for the great work of consolidation perfected by Henry II.; on the one hand by the misery and disgust excited by the lawless outrages of the barons; on the other by the overwhelming power thrown into the hands of the Church, which could not co-exist with any true national monarchy.

On his coronation, Stephen, in general terms, promised to uphold the good laws of his predecessors. At the first great council of his reign he issued a more explicit charter, securing to the Church their property and privileges, and promising to suppress illegalities on the part of the sheriffs. The character of the reign rendered such a charter quite inoperative. The insurrection in Wales, which had been bringing Henry to England when he died, continued. Its conduct fell chiefly to Ranulf, Earl of Chester, and Richard Fitz-Gilbert of Clare. Stephen’s presence on the borders did not succeed in checking it. Richard Fitz-Gilbert was killed, and he left the country as before to be conquered by the gradual advance of the lords marchers.

Already, it would seem, the yielding character of Stephen had been discovered. Already barons began to take advantage of it. Roger Bigot seized the Castle of Norwich, and wrested from the King the earldom of that county and of East Anglia. Robert of Bathenton and Baldwin of Redvers, in Devonshire, began to rebel. They were indeed both conquered, but such movements mark the temper of the times. In 1137 Stephen found himself strong enough to cross to Normandy, where Geoffrey of Anjou was making war upon his provinces. His success there was not great. He purchased from Geoffrey a cessation of hostilities. Meanwhile the Northern frontier of England had become a scene of war. David of Scotland, the nephew of Eadgar Ætheling, and uncle through his sister Matilda of the Empress, had himself some claims to the English throne. But these he declared that he waived, wishing to abide true to the oath he had taken to support his niece. He, however, demanded that his son Henry should be allowed to do homage to Stephen for Cumberland, and that he himself should receive the counties of Northumberland and Huntingdon, which he claimed in right of his wife, the daughter of Earl Waltheof. Though he himself declared that he had no desire for the English throne, there is mentioned by one chronicler[9] a general conspiracy of the native English with their exiled countrymen, of whom the south of Scotland was full, for the purpose of taking advantage of the condition of the country to put to death the Normans, and to place the crown upon David’s head. The plot was discovered by the Bishop of Ely, who was at once Bishop and Governor of that district, which had been formed by the last king into a modified county palatine. He told his discovery, and many of the conspirators were hanged, but many others found a refuge in Scotland. At length, in 1138, David entered England with a large army, and pushed forward as far as Northallerton in Yorkshire. He was there met by the forces of the Northern bishops and barons, gathered under the command of Walter Espec, Thurstan, the aged Archbishop of York, William of Albemarle, Roger of Mowbray, and other barons. They gathered round a tall mast borne upon a carriage, on which, above the standards of the three Northern Saints, St. Peter of York, St. John of Beverley, and St. Wilfred of Ripon, was displayed a silver pyx bearing the consecrated wafer. The motley army of the Scots, some armed as the English, some in the wild dress of the Picts of Galloway, after a well-fought battle, broke against the full-clad Norman soldiers, and were killed by the arrows, which had now become the national weapon of the English; 11,000 are said to have fallen on the field. But, in spite of the victory, Stephen, conscious of his general weakness, accepted an unfavourable peace, by which Northumberland was given to Prince Henry.

All this time the spirit of lawlessness had been increasing. “Many persons,” says the chronicler,[10] “emboldened to illegal acts, either by nobility of descent or by ambition, were not ashamed, some to demand castles, others estates, and indeed whatever came into their fancy, from the King. When he delayed complying with their request ... they, becoming enraged, immediately fortified their castles against him, and drove away large booties from his lands.” “He created likewise many earls where there had been none before; appropriating to them rents which had before belonged to the crown. They were the more greedy in asking, and he more profuse in giving, because a rumour was pervading England that Robert of Gloucester would shortly espouse the cause of his sister.” The creation of earldoms had been rare under the three first Norman kings, and as those offices died out their places had not been filled. It is said, indeed, that in 1131 there were but three earls in England, Robert of Gloucester, and the Earls of Chester and Leicester.[11] As the earl received the third penny of the fines of his earldom, the creation of earls manifestly impoverished the crown. But Stephen appears to have gone beyond the filling up of regular earldoms, and to have created titular earls,[12] with grants of royal demesne lands to support their dignity. The building of castles[13] was the great sign of the anarchical condition of England, implying private war and all the other horrors of the worst forms of continental feudalism.

This anarchy began to assume a form when Robert of Gloucester, alleging his previous oath to Matilda, and asserting that the conditions on which he had accepted Stephen had not been kept, renounced his fealty. His influence was in his earldom, and in the West of England; the headquarters of his party was Bristol; and his agent during his absence was Milo, Constable of Gloucester, afterwards Earl of Hereford. Nearly all the West, and by no means the West only, declared for Matilda. But in most cases the rival claims to the throne were used as an excuse merely. Change of sides was common, and there are instances of leaders excluding their own nominal partisans from strongholds they had won.[14] At first the insurrection was unsuccessful. Stephen, conscious of his weakness, had collected mercenaries from Flanders and from Brittany. The condition of the country made them eager to come. In Stephen’s time numbers of freebooters from Flanders and Brittany flocked to England in expectation of pillage.[15] The chief leader of the Flemings was William of Ypres; the Bretons were commanded by Alan the Black of Richmond, HervÉ of LÉon, and Alan of Dinan. With the aid of these Stephen speedily regained the great castles he had lost, such as Bath, Castlecary, Harptree, and Shrewsbury; and might perhaps even yet have established his authority, when an act of supreme folly set him at variance with the Church.

The new administrative class was represented by Roger of Salisbury, who had succeeded in procuring for his nephew Alexander the bishopric of Lincoln, for Nigel the bishopric of Ely, while his illegitimate son Roger was Chancellor. The vast wealth and influence of this family encouraged them to build castles, and Devizes, Sherborne, Malmesbury, and Salisbury were strongly fortified. The family of Beaumont, Earls of Mellent, had been generally firm supporters of the crown and of authority. They now seem to have seen with jealousy their position as the chief advisers to the crown occupied by men of law, ecclesiastics, yet without the sanctity which befits the ecclesiastical profession. At their instigation, and at that of their friends, the King took the ill-advised step of beginning his assault on his castle-building barons by demanding the surrender of these bishops’ castles. The Bishops of Lincoln and Salisbury were suddenly arrested at an assembly held at Oxford (1139); the Bishop of Ely took refuge in the castle of Devizes. Thither the King betook himself, with his two prisoners, as some accounts assert, kept entirely without food, one in a cow-stall and the other in a hovel. This treatment of the bishops, and a threat of hanging Roger the Chancellor, produced the surrender of Devizes as well as the other three castles.

The success was dearly bought. The King’s brother, Henry of Winchester, upheld the dignity of his order. He summoned a council, produced a Papal letter declaring him legate, proceeded to lay his charges against the King before the council, and advised him to submit to canonical punishment. Stephen’s case was defended by Aubrey de Vere, who, when the aggrieved bishops spoke of an appeal to Rome, declared that the King advised them not to do so, as whoever went might find it difficult to return; and himself appealed to the jurisdiction of the Pope. This threat, and an ominous appearance of drawn swords around the meeting, prevented the bishops from proceeding to extremities; but none the less had Stephen forfeited their support. The immediate effect was the arrival of Gloucester and the Empress in the South of England.

After a short stay at Arundel, the Empress withdrew to join her brother, who had preceded her, at Bristol. There had been a friendly meeting with Henry of Winchester upon their arrival, and it was the same Henry who escorted the Empress to join her brother.[16] The scene of confusion became still more confused. Brian Fitz-Count[17] held Wallingford for the Empress; Milo of Gloucester regained many of the Western castles which Stephen had won. In Cornwall, Reginald of Dunstanville, a brother of the Earl of Gloucester, upheld, though without much success, the cause of the Empress. In Wiltshire, Fitz-Hubert, a Fleming, and Fitz-Gilbert fought nominally for the Empress, really for themselves, till Fitz-Gilbert enticed Fitz-Hubert, who had refused admission to the partisans of the Empress for whom he was nominally fighting, to the Castle of Marlborough, and there hanged him.

The quarrel between Stephen and his bishops grew worse and worse. Roger of Salisbury died in 1139. The Bishop of Winchester demanded the See for his nephew. Again Waleram of Mellent thwarted the Church, and his request was refused. At the Whitsuntide festival (1141) held in London, but one bishop,[18] and that a foreign one, was with the court. The state of uncertain anarchy was becoming highly distasteful to Robert of Gloucester. An opportunity occurred of bringing matters to a crisis. Ranulph, the Earl of Chester, had hitherto played fast and loose with both parties, and the King had parted from him at Lincoln, which he possessed in right of his mother Lucia, believing him to be his partisan. But, a few days after his departure, Ranulph and his brother William of Roumare, surprised the castle, on which the King, who was a good soldier and very rapid in his movements, suddenly came back and besieged it. Ranulph escaped from the castle to Robert of Gloucester, who seized the occasion to bring on a pitched battle. With Ranulph, his own partisans, and the Welsh, he reached the Trent, passed it with some difficulty, and appeared suddenly before Lincoln. A great battle ensued, in which the victory fell to Gloucester, and Stephen was himself taken prisoner.

Of course this defeat somewhat changed the balance of affairs. Cornwall was regained for the Empress, and her influence reached eastward as far as Bedford and Nottingham. But she could not hope in any true sense to obtain the crown without the consent of the all-powerful Church. At once therefore negotiations were opened with Henry of Winchester. Having won his adherence, and with it that of the greater part of the bishops, she went from Gloucester, accompanied by the Bishop of Ely and other supporters, to Winchester. In an open plain without the city she swore to follow the advice of the Legate on Church matters. Her oath was attested by Milo, afterwards Earl of Hereford, Earl Gloucester, Brian Fitz-Count, and others. A council of the Church was held a few days after. The Legate addressed the assembly, and declared his adhesion to Matilda. It is to be observed that he waited a day to receive the citizens of London, who were “as it were nobles by reason of the magnitude of the city.” Both the Londoners and many of the nobility besought for the release of Stephen, but their request was refused, and many of the royal party executed. Having obtained the castle of Oxford from Robert of Oilli, Matilda proceeded to London; but there the haughtiness of her behaviour soon produced the ruin of her cause.

It seems as though, if he could only have regained his liberty, Stephen himself and his partisans would have been willing now to retire from the contest. The Earls of Leicester and Mellent, hitherto staunch supporters of the King, together with his old friend Hugh, the Bishop of Rouen, went so far as to offer the crown to Stephen’s brother Theobald. But that prince declined to receive it, and even advised them to transfer their offer to Geoffrey of Anjou, on the sole condition that Stephen should be liberated. Taking advantage of such an opportunity as this, while supported by the friendship of Henry of Winchester and the Londoners, Matilda might have made her throne secure, but she at once took steps which alienated both. To Henry of Winchester, who must naturally have felt the ties of relationship towards his brother, she refused the natural request that Stephen’s son Eustace might be placed in possession of his father’s foreign fiefs. From the Londoners she demanded a heavy tallage, in spite of their complaints that they had been already stripped by taxations. King Stephen’s Queen, to whom many of the fugitives from Lincoln had betaken themselves, made use of the discontent thus excited to advance against London. The inhabitants rose, and the Empress barely escaped with a few followers to Oxford. The insurgents demanded the liberation of Stephen. In this demand the Bishop of Winchester now joined, and the Empress besieged him in his castle outside the town of Winchester. But her besieging army was soon itself besieged, its communications and means of subsistence cut off, and she found herself obliged to retire. The Earl of Gloucester therefore despatched her before him to Devizes, while he himself covered her retreat. But he was hotly pursued and taken prisoner. This neutralized all his previous successes. After some negotiations the great prisoners were exchanged, and the state of parties fell back very much to its position before the battle of Lincoln.

Of decided successes on either side there were none. In 1142, the Empress, hard pressed at Oxford, barely made her escape with two knights, all clothed in white, across the snow. In the following year Stephen, on the other hand, suffered a defeat at Wilton. The same struggle for individual liberty on the part of the barons was apparent everywhere. Thus the Cathedral of Coventry was changed into a fortress by a baron of the name of Marmion, the Abbey of Ramsey by Mandeville. Nor did the retirement of several of the hotter spirits from the contest to join in a crusade which St. Bernard was then preaching materially change the aspect of affairs. But, in 1147, new actors begin to appear upon the scene. Wearied with the long useless struggle, Matilda withdrew to France. But to take her place her son Prince Henry came over to England. As it were to match him, Stephen brought his son Eustace prominently forward. This change of persons is still more clearly marked by the death of the great Earl of Gloucester, a man to whom many acts of cruelty in accordance with the temper of the time could be attributed, but who, if we may judge from the testimony of William of Malmesbury, was far superior in character and civilization to most of those by whom he was surrounded.

The withdrawal of the Empress and the appearance of Henry made a considerable difference in the views of those barons in England who were not wholly selfish. Stephen had been tried and failed. They had no longer to fear the rule of a woman. And thus we find Robert of Leicester, second son of the great Earl of Mellent, who had hitherto served Stephen and done him good service in Normandy against the Angevins, giving in his adherence to the young prince. In company with his cousin Roger of Warwick, he held the town and castle of Worcester for him, and succeeded in driving off the royal army. Henry’s accession to the county of Anjou upon the death of his father Geoffrey, in 1151, and still more his marriage with Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis, heiress of Poitiers and Guienne, changed the character of the war. He was no longer a poor claimant, at best the son of a count, but had been suddenly transformed into one of the most powerful princes in Europe. In addition to this, since the death of Pope Innocent in 1144, the Papal See had been taking a more decided course against Stephen. The legatine authority had been withdrawn from Henry of Winchester, whose relationship with Stephen made his action always doubtful, and been given to Theobald the Archbishop, but Stephen, with his usual want of address, contrived to quarrel with him, and he therefore threw his whole weight upon the side of Henry.

Thus, when Henry contrived to form a truce with his rival the French King, and to enter England with a considerable army, the country was much disposed to receive him. Many of the nobility began to declare for him. The Beaumonts, as we have seen, were already his friends. The Countess of Warwick placed her castle in his hands. Robert of Leicester supplied him with provisions, and he marched in good hope to relieve Wallingford, which, defended by Brian Fitz-Count, Stephen was now besieging. There the two armies met; but the desire for peace was so general, that they both demanded that negotiations should be opened. Nothing was then settled, but the armies separated. Stephen proceeded to besiege Ipswich, where Bigot had declared for Henry, and Henry, taking Nottingham on the way, was marching to relieve it, when the heads of the Church saw their opportunity, and Theobald and Henry of Winchester combined to mediate a peace. This was the more easy on account of the death of the young Prince Eustace. On the 7th of November the Treaty of Pacification was concluded at Winchester. It was a compromise. Stephen was to remain King of England during his life; Henry was to be accepted as his son and heir; Stephen’s son William was to do homage to Henry for all his large possessions in England and in Normandy. There then followed an arrangement for restoring the administration which the war had ruined. The castles were to be razed, the coinage reformed, the sheriffs replaced, the crown lands resumed, the new earldoms extinguished, foreigners banished, and administration of justice restored.[19] After this treaty Henry’s duties summoned him chiefly to France; and Stephen, for the short remnant of his life, remained undisputed King of England. He died on the 25th of October 1154.

Two short extracts from chroniclers give a more complete view of the misery which attended this lawless period than any fresh description could do. William of Newbury says: “Wounded and drained of blood by civil misery, England lay plague-stricken. It is written of an ancient people, ‘In those days there was no king in Israel, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes;’ but in England, under King Stephen, the case was worse. For, because at that time the King was powerless, and the law languished because the King was powerless, though some indeed did what seemed right in their own eyes, many because all fear of King and law was taken off them, did all the more greedily what by their natural instincts they knew to be wrong.... Neither King nor Empress was able to act in a masterful way, or show vigorous discipline. But each kept their own followers in good temper by refusing them nothing lest they should desert them.... And because they were worn out by daily strife, and acted less vigorously, local disturbances of hostile lords grew the more vehement. Castles too rose in great numbers in the several districts, and there were in England, so to speak, as many kings, or rather tyrants, as lords of castles. Individuals took the right of coining their private money, and of private jurisdiction.” We have here the effects of the loosened hold of the crown,—castles, private war, private coinage, private justice. The Saxon Chronicle supplies us with a picture of the effect of these feudal usurpations upon the lower ranks of the people:—

“When the traitors perceived that Stephen was a mild man, and soft and good, and did no justice, then did they all wonder. They had done homage to him and sworn oaths, but held no faith; for every powerful man made his castles and held them against him, and they filled the land full of castles. They cruelly oppressed the wretched men of the land with castle works. When the castles were made, they filled them with devils and evil men. Then they took those men that they imagined had any property, both by night and by day, peasant men and women, and put them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them with unutterable torture; for never were martyrs so tortured as they were. They hanged them up by the feet and smoked them with foul smoke; they hanged them up by the thumbs or by the head, and hung fires on their feet; they put knotted strings about their heads, and writhed them so that it went to the brain. They put them in dungeons, in which were adders, and snakes, and toads, and killed them so. Some they put in a ‘cruset hÛs,’ that is in a chest that was short and narrow and shallow, and put sharp stones therein, and pressed the man therein, so that they brake all his limbs. In many of the castles were instruments called a ‘lao (loathly) and grim;’ these were neck-bonds, of which two or three men had enough to bear one. It was so made, that is, it was fastened to a beam, and they put a sharp iron about the man’s throat and his neck, so that he could not in any direction sit, or lie, or sleep, but must bear all that iron. Many thousands they killed with hunger; I neither can nor may tell all the wounds or all the tortures which they inflicted on wretched men in this land; and that lasted the nineteen winters while Stephen was King; and ever it was worse and worse. They laid imposts on the towns continually; and when the wretched men had no more to give, they robbed and burned all the towns, so that thou mightest well go all a day’s journey, and thou shouldest never find a man sitting in a town, or the land tilled. Then was corn dear, and flesh and cheese and butter; for there was none in the land. Wretched men died of hunger; some went seeking alms who at one while were rich men; some fled out of the land. Never yet had more wretchedness been in the land, nor did heathen men ever do worse than they did; for everywhere at times they forbore neither church nor churchyard, but took all the property that was therein, and then burned the church and altogether. Nor forbore they a bishop’s land, nor an abbot’s, nor a priest’s, but robbed monks and clerks, and every man another who anywhere could. If two or three men came riding to a town, all the township fled before them, imagining them to be robbers. The bishops and clergy constantly cursed them, but nothing came of it, for they were all accursed, and forsworn, and lost. However a man tilled, the earth bare no corn; for the land was all foredone by such deeds, and they said openly that Christ and His saints slept. Such, and more than we can say, we endured nineteen winters for our sins.”

A people who had suffered these things must certainly have sighed for a strong government, by whatever hand it should be wielded; and miserable though the reign had been, it tended towards the consolidation of nationality.