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CHAPTER IV.

STEPHEN.*

1135_1154.

Usurpation of Stephen. — Miseries endured by the people. - War between

Stephen and the empress ;-between Stephen and young Henry.-Death of Stephen.

In a regularly ordered state, the succession of Matilda would have followed as a matter of course, as no one else had even the shadow of a claim to the crown; but Henry himself had by his usurpation shown how a crown might be acquired without right, and there was one, whom perhaps he little suspected, ready to tread in his footsteps.

Adela daughter of the Conqueror had been married to the count of Blois, to whom she bare a numerous offspring; two of her sons had been invited over to England by king Henry, and he made one of them, Henry, who was in holy orders, abbot of Glastonbury, and afterwards bishop of Winchester; for Stephen, the other, he obtained in marriage the daughter and heiress of the count of Boulogne, who had also large estates in England; he moreover conferred on him extensive domains in both England and Normandy. Stephen always affected great gratitude toward his uncle, and he had been forward in taking the oath of fealty to the empress in 1131t. By his valour, liberality, and affable manners he had gained great favour with both barons and people in England, and the citizens of London were especially devoted to him.

On the death of his uncle, Stephen resolved to make a bold effort for the crown; he passed over to England, and hastened to London, where he was received with acclamations by the populace. His brother and the bishop of Salisbury endeavoured to prevail on the primate to crown him; and to overcome that prelate's scruples they produced Hugh Bigod, a servant of the late king, who made oath that when on his death-bed he had declared his intention of making the count of Boulogne his heir. The primate was, or affected to be, convinced, and he performed the ceremony of the coronation at Westminster (Dec. 22).

Stephen, imitating his predecessor, issued a charter exactly similar to his, with probably as little intention of observing it; he had further, still following his uncle's example, lost no time in getting possession of the royal treasure of 100,0001. which lay at Winchester, and with this money he took into his pay a large body of mercenary soldiers from the continent, and procured a recognition of his title at Rome.

The Norman barons, moved by hereditary animosity to the Angevins, and also by the motives which had always made them desire the union of their duchy with England, readily submitted to Stephen; and the king of France, Louis the Young, received the homage of his son Eustace for that province, and gave him his own sister in marriage. Geoffrey of Anjou was obliged to make a truce for twoyears with Stephen, on condition of being paid 5000 marks a year during that period. Robert earl of Gloucester, the natural brother of the empress, to whom he was much attached, was the person whom Stephen had most to dread. This nobleman would do him homage only on conditions which would give him a pretext for revolt whenever he pleased, and the king was obliged to consent. The clergy

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made similar reservations in their oaths; the barons extorted the right of fortifying their castles, and soon fortresses rose on all sides, filled with a brutal and ferocious soldiery. A contest for the crown commenced ere long between Stephen and Matilda, and the miseries which ensued are thus vividly described by one who witnessed them.

“In this king's time,” says the contemporary Saxon Chronicle, “was all dissention and evil and rapine ; for against him soon arose the rich (i. e. great) men that were traitors; when they found that he was a mild man, and soft and good, and did no justice (execution], then did they do all wonders. They had done him homage and sworn oaths, but they held no truth; they were all forsworn and heeded not their troth ; for

rich man built his castles, and they held them against him, and they filled the land full of castles. They sorely oppressed the wretched men of the land with castle-works, and when the castles were made they filled them with devils and evil men; then took they the men that they weened had any goods, both by night and by day, peasant men and women, and put them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them with tortures not to be told, for never were any martyrs so tortured as they were; some they hung up by the feet and smoked them with foul smoke; some they hung by the thumbs or by the head, and hung coats of mail at their feet; to some they put knotted strings round their head and twisted them till it went to the brains ; they put them into dungeons where there were adders, and snakes, and toads, and killed them so; some they put in the crucet-house, that is in a chest that was short and narrow and not deep, and put sharp stones in it, and forced the man in, and so broke all his limbs. In many of the castles were things loathly and grim that were called Sachenteges (culprits' halters], of which two or three men had enough to do to carry one that was so made, that is fastened to a beam, and they put a sharp iron about the man's throat and neck that he might on no side sit or lie, or sleep, but bear all that iron. Many thousands did they kill with hunger. I cannot and may not tell all the wounds and all the pains that they gave to wretched men in this land, and that lasted for the nineteen winters that Stephen was king, and still it was worse and worse. They laid guilds [taxes] evermore on the towns, and called it tensezie; when the wretched men had no more to give they robbed and burned all the towns, that well thou mightest go a whole day's journey and shouldest never find a man sitting [dwelling] in a town or 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 took to alms who were one time rich men; some fled out of the land; never yet was more wretchedness in the land, and never did heathen men worse than they did; for after a time they spared neither church nor church-yard*, but took all the goods that were therein, and then burned church and all together; neither did they spare bishop's land nor abbots, nor priest’s, but robbed monks and clerks, and every man who was able another; if two or three men came riding to a town all the township fled before them, weening that they were robbers. The bishops and learned men cursed them evermore, but nought thereof came on them, for they were all accursed and forsworn and abandoned. It was the sea men tilled; the earth bare no corn, for the land was all destroyed with such deeds, and they said openly that Christ slept and his saints. Such and more than we can say we tholed nineteen winters for our sins."

After this faithful picture, drawn by the hand of one who described what he beheld, of the horrors of feudalism and the misery caused by the usurpation of Stephen, it seems hardly necessary to go into details ; we will however narrate succinctly the principal events of the contest for the crown.

In the first year of Stephen's reign (1136) the earl of Exeter took arms against him, and David king of Scotland invaded England in the cause of his niece the empress; but the earl was forced to submit, and the Scottish king agreed to an accommodation. In 1138 David again invaded England; the ravages committed by his wild ferocious followers are described as exceeding the usual limits of atrocity, and the earl of Albemarle and the other barons of those parts, animated by Thurstan, the venerable archbishop of York, lost no time in collecting their troops to oppose them. The armies encountered at Northallerton (Aug. 22), and in the battle called that of the Standard from a large crucifix on a wain used by the English as a standard, the Scots were totally defeated.

Earl Robert having matured his plans in favour of his sister, pretended that Stephen had violated the conditions made with him, renounced his allegiance, and withdrew to the continent (1139). As Stephen had now embroiled himself also with the church, by forcing the bishops of Salisbury and Lincoln to deliver up the castles they had erected, Robert advised the empress to appear in England to head her party. She landed (Sept. 30) with him and one hundred and forty knights in Sussex, was received by the queen dowager Adelais in her castle of Arundel, and thence proceeded to her brother's castle of Bristol. Geoffrey Talbot, William Mohun, Ralph Lovel, and several other barons declared for her, and her cause gradually gained ground; battles and skirmishes occurred in various parts all through the following year; at length (Feb. 2, 1141) Stephen and earl Robert came to an engagement near Lincoln, and the king was defeated and led a captive to Gloucester, where he was treated with great rigour. The barons of Stephen's party all submitted; the bishop of