A History of England, Period I. Mediæval Monarchy

Chapter VI: Introduction (5)

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[Sidenote: Death of Henry.]

The close of his reign was chiefly occupied in arranging disputes in consequence of this marriage. It was while still in Normandy on this business, though his presence was imperatively demanded in England to suppress an insurrection in Wales, that he died, as it is said, of the effects of a hearty meal of lampreys on the 1st of December 1135.

[Sidenote: Welsh held in check by colonies of Flemings.]

[Sidenote: Constant insurrections.]

Throughout the reign he had had considerable difficulties with the Welsh, for although, as has been said, many Norman knights and barons had established strongholds among them, they were by no means subdued. They took part in the insurrection of Robert of Belesme; and Henry, conscious that they would be difficult to conquer, hit upon the plan of establishing among them colonies of Flemings, many of whom had come over with the Conqueror, and still more about the year 1106, driven from their country by inundations. The land granted them was in the western part of Wales, near Haverfordwest and Tenby, where they acted at once as a military post, and, through their knowledge of manufacture and agriculture, as an instrument of civilization. In 1114 the Welsh rose under Gryffith. The occupation of Caermarthen and Cardigan, where Gilbert Strongbow, Earl of Strigul, was at that time commanding, separated the Flemings from the English, and Henry was compelled to march to their rescue. This insurrection was suppressed by Robert of Gloucester, himself the son of Gryffith’s sister.[7] Small insurrections continued. In 1122 Henry again went in person to Wales, but, on the whole, the inhabitants were kept in subjection by the Flemings and by numerous Norman castles till 1134, when they were provoked to a new outbreak, so important that the King was preparing to cross from Normandy to suppress it, when he died.

[Sidenote: Henry’s Church policy.]

[Sidenote: Anselm refuses fealty.]

[Sidenote: Anselm has to leave England.]

[Sidenote: Unsupported by the Pope, makes compromise at Bec. 1106.]

[Sidenote: Synod of Westminster.]

At home the great points of Henry’s reign were those which form the domestic history of all feudal monarchies, the relation of the Church and State, and the maintenance of police. With regard to the Church his views were those of his father. He was ready to support and increase its influence; he was not ready to give up any of the prerogatives which his predecessors had possessed. He thus reversed all the action of his brother, recalled Anselm at once with marked honour, and filled up the vacant benefices. But the Archbishop during his exile had mixed in Continental politics, at that time consisting almost entirely of the question of investitures. He returned home determined to assert to the full the independence of the Church. He therefore refused to swear fealty, and do homage to the King, or to consecrate those bishops who had received their investitures from him. Henry, supported by his lay counsellors, was equally determined to uphold the rights of the crown. The matter was referred to the Pope, Pascal II. The Papacy had enemies enough already, and could not afford to drive to extremities a Prince so powerful, and in the main so friendly, as Henry. The reply which was returned was ambiguous. Henry again commanded the Archbishop to perform his usual duties. A second application to Rome produced no better result. Anselm was urged to perseverance. Henry’s ambassadors were given to understand that, as long as his appointments were good, the King should not be interfered with. Firm in his own views, but uncertain as to the Pope’s wishes, Anselm had no course open to him but to visit Rome in person. He there met with but lukewarm support, and withdrew to Lyons, while Henry laid hands upon all the revenues of the archbishopric. For some time Anselm rejected all offers of compromise; but when, after all his efforts, he could induce the Pope to go no further than the excommunication, not of the King, but of some of his ministers, he lost heart, and, in 1106, a compromise was arranged at Bec, by which Henry retained the really important part of investiture, the oaths of fealty and homage, while resigning the idle symbol of the gift of ring and crozier. This compromise, which was the same in effect as that made sixteen years afterwards at Worms between Henry V. and Calixtus II., set at rest for the present that rivalry between Church and State which the policy of the Conqueror had introduced. The decrees of a Synod held at Westminster, 1102, by Anselm before going to Rome, show the abuses which the ecclesiastical disputes of the last reign had introduced. They are directed against such habits as simony, marriage of the clergy, the assumption of lay dress by ecclesiastics, the holding of secular courts by bishops, the adoration of unauthorized saints and relics, and vindicate the claims of the Church to be considered as the chief civilizing agent of the time by forbidding the selling of men for slaves.

[Sidenote: Frequent unfit appointments in the Church. Henry corrects them when possible.]

It was not always that the Church appeared in such an amiable light. Henry no doubt, on the whole, attempted to make good appointments, but interest or desire to reward an ardent partisan sometimes put an unfit person into office. Thus Henry of Poitou was given the Abbey of Peterborough, although he already held an abbey in France, apparently as a reward for the support he gave the King in upholding the illegality of the marriage between William Clito and Sibylla of Anjou on the score of consanguinity. “He came like a drone to a hive,” says the chronicler; “all that the bees draw towards them the drones devour and draw from them, so did he.” It is fair to say that Henry, when he found out how bad a person he had appointed, had him removed. “It was not very long after that that the King sent for him, and made him give up the Abbey of Peterborough, and go out of the land.” Thus, again, after a great distribution of abbeys in 1107, it is remarked “that the abbots were rather wolves than shepherds.” Such complaints are however usually uttered by English writers, and the plight of the conquered people was evidently very miserable.

[Sidenote: Wretched condition of the people.]

[Sidenote: Extracts from old chroniclers.]

It was a time of great suffering on more accounts than one, and the suffering was of a kind to fall chiefly upon the lower orders. Agriculture was so rough that any little irregularity in the seasons produced a failure of the crops, and the habits of the people were such that any infectious disease was liable to become a pestilence. The constant warfare, either against his vassals or his enemies, which the King carried on, was the cause of frequent taxation, against which no class in the State had it in their power to remonstrate; while the natural and artificial causes of suffering were further aggravated by the frequent issue of false coin. Thus we find year after year such entries as these in the chroniclers:--“The year 1105 was very miserable, because of the failure of the crops, and the ceaseless taxation.” “The year 1110 was full of wretchedness, because of the bad season, and the tribute the King demanded for his daughter’s dowry.” “In this year (1124) were many failures in England in corn and all fruit, so that between Christmas and Candlemas the acre seed of wheat was sold for six shillings; and that of barley, that is three seedlips for three shillings, the acre seed of oats for four shillings, because there was little corn, and the penny was so bad that a man who had at market a pound could by no means buy therewith twelvepenny-worth.” “In this same year (1125) was so great a flood on St. Lawrence’s mass day that many towns and men were drowned, and bridges shattered; corn and meadows totally destroyed, and for all fruits there was so bad a season as there had not been for many years before.” “In that year (1131) there was so great a murrain of cattle as never was in the memory of man.” This carried off neat, swine, and domestic fowls alike. And when the harvest was good the pestilence came. “This year (1112) was a very good year, and very abundant in wood and field, but it was a very sorrowful one through a most destructive pestilence.” Or again, the year 1104, “It is not easy to recount all the miseries the country suffered this year through various and manifold illegalities and imposts which never ceased nor failed, and ever as the King went there was plundering by his followers on his wretched people, and at the same time often burnings and murders.”

[Sidenote: Their chief complaints.]

[Sidenote: Baronial tyranny.]

In these extracts, which might be largely multiplied, the chief causes of the people’s misery are mentioned. Heavy taxes, famines, floods, pestilence, false money, and purveyance. To attempt to rectify such of these as were within the power of man, was one main part of Henry’s duty. To that was added the work of suppressing, by a centralized royal power, the excesses of the feudal barons. What crying necessity there was that they should be suppressed is made plain by the stories related of Robert of Belesme, their chief. He is spoken of as guilty of the most unheard-of barbarities, as having scorned the ransoms of his captives to torture them by newfangled instruments; he found delight in seeing men and women impaled and struggling in the agonies of death. “He was a man,” says William of Malmesbury, “intolerable for the barbarity of his manners, remarkable besides for cruelty;” and, among other instances, he relates how, on account of some trifling fault of its father, he blinded his godchild, who was his hostage, by tearing out the poor little creature’s eyes with “his accursed nails.”

[Sidenote: Heavy taxation.]

[Sidenote: Henry cures what evils he can.]

One complaint of his people Henry systematically disregarded. He could not afford to do without his taxes, and on all classes on this point he leant with a heavy hand. But in other respects, as far as in him lay, he rectified abuses of administration, and established a vigorous and effectual police. The evils of purveyance had become extreme; no property was safe from the hands of the followers of the court, and when they found larger supplies than they wanted, “if it was liquor they washed their horses’ feet in it, or food they wantonly destroyed it.” But Henry made a regulation for the followers of his court, at whichever of his residences he might be, stating what they should take without payment from the country folk, and how much, and at what price they should purchase, punishing the transgressors by heavy fine or loss of life. So with regard to false coinage, immediately after the complaint of high prices in the year 1124, it is mentioned that Henry at once sent from Normandy to England, and commanded that all the moneyers should have their right hands cut off, and be otherwise mutilated. Bishop Roger of Salisbury sent all over England, commanded them all to come before him, and then and there punished upwards of fifty. Henry was careful, indeed, in other ways with regard to the money, having the whole of the coinage broken to prevent the refusal of broken silver pennies; for it seems to have been the custom to break the coinage to see that the money was good, and tradesmen not unfrequently refused the broken coins.

[Sidenote: His strict police.]

Against offences of violence Henry was equally vigorous. At one single court held in Leicestershire by Basset the Justiciary, during the King’s absence in 1124, no less than forty-four thieves were condemned and hanged, besides others mutilated. “He sought after robbers and counterfeiters with the greatest diligence, and punished them when discovered,” says William of Malmesbury. Rivalling his father also in other respects, he restrained by edict the acts of his courtiers, thefts, rapine, and the violation of women, commanding the delinquents to be deprived of sight. He also displayed singular vigilance against the mint masters, suffering no man who had been guilty of “deluding the innocent by the practice of roguery” to escape without losing his hands. “A good man he was,” says the Saxon Chronicle, “and all men stood in awe of him; no man durst misdo against another in his time. He made peace for man and beast. Whoso bare his burden of gold and silver, no man thirst do him aught but good.”

[Sidenote: Administrative machinery.]

[Sidenote: Local courts.]

[Sidenote: Curia Regis.]

To carry out this strict police some apparatus was necessary, which at the same time should serve the purpose of diminishing the power of the great nobles, and that of beginning at all events, by its centralizing influence, to re-form the conquered people and their conquerors into one nation. The rudiments of such an apparatus Henry found already existing in the arrangements which the Conqueror had made. The system of frankpledge, increased and adapted to the more general feudal form of society, supplied him with an efficient system of police. There was no man in the kingdom but some one was answerable for him. If he was a vassal, his lord. If he was a freeman, the knot of freemen of which he was a member. As courts to carry out this system, there were the old Hundred and Shire gemots. These Henry strengthened and, it would seem from one existing order, restored when in any way decayed to their original purity. To these courts criminal cases belonged, and civil suits between vassals of different lords. Questions between vassals of the same lord seem to have fallen within the jurisdiction of the lord. But these inferior courts, although they were excellent for police purposes, and as a check upon the powers of the baronial courts, would have done little towards the formation of nationality had they not been brought into connection with a superior court of which the king was chief. This central court consisted of the King in his ordinary council, which, since the Conquest, was known as the Curia Regis. Over it was the justiciary, who was the King’s representative, his regent during his absence, the head of his administration, both judicial and financial, at all times. Under him was a selection of barons, the chief officers of the royal household, and those best qualified for judicial purposes. The clerks of this court were placed under a head, who was the chancellor. The judges themselves sat for financial purposes in the exchequer chamber, and were spoken of as the barons of the exchequer. For general business they were called justices, and their head the chief-justice. The organization of this court dates from the reign of Henry I. The office of chief justiciary had been founded by William the Conqueror, but the regular formation of the Exchequer Court was the work of Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, in the hands of whose family the direction of the machinery remained for nearly a century.[8] It was afterwards, as we shall see, brought to its completion by Henry II., but all its essential parts are to be found in the reign of his grandfather. It was as officers of finance that the justices first began to traverse the country. The sheriffs could not always be trusted in their own localities, and change of property and other causes gave rise to difficult questions, requiring to be settled by the immediate intervention of the King’s officers. From financial questions their authority naturally passed to questions of justice, and their connection with the local courts was further strengthened when Henry united several sheriffdoms under one of his justices. Following a natural tendency, the men employed for these offices were not the great barons, but new men, who rose by their talents, and were naturally upholders of the royal power and of order in opposition to the anarchical baronial party.

To sum up; after the year 1108, when the local courts were re-established, both the Hundred and county courts were the same in constitution and in arrangement as before the Conquest. But they were connected with the central government; because matters in which the King was interested were set aside for the consideration of the Curia Regis, or travelling justiciary sent out from that body; and because the Norman lawyers had introduced the practice of issuing writs from the King’s court, whereby the King, in virtue of what is called his “equitable power,” that is, his power of securing justice where the law did not give it, prescribed the method of action in certain difficult cases. The Hundred court was sometimes a lower court for the arrangement of small debts; the Bailiff of the Hundred then presided. Sometimes it was the great court held only twice a year; the sheriff then presided, the court exercised criminal jurisdiction, and was known as the “Court Leet.” It also saw to the filling up of the divisions of ten men required by the system of Frankpledge; this was called “the view of frankpledge.” The court was then known as “the Sheriff’s Tourn.” Below these local courts were the feudal manor courts, the old motes of the township, now become the courts of the lord. But we must not suppose that the authority of the sheriff and the local courts (now virtually royal courts) was universal. Certain great lords enjoyed franchises, that is, exercised jurisdiction over several manors. If the lord had “sac and soc,” his court had the authority of the Court Leet. If he had “the view of frankpledge,” the suitors at his court were free from attendance at the Sheriff’s Tourn. His court was then in all points like the Hundred court, but independent of the sheriff. This double system Henry had apparently to submit to, watching the baronial power as well as he could, by means of the local courts and travelling justices.

[Sidenote: The National Assembly.]

It is to be carefully remembered that though the Curia Regis, representing the King’s council, attested charters, and revised and registered laws, it had no legislative authority. Both the imposition of taxes and the making of laws still rested with the King and his great council, the representative of the Witan, which had become a feudal court, and consisted chiefly of the King’s vassals. Their “counsel and consent” was a necessary condition of all legislation.

STEPHEN.

1135-1154.

Born 1105 = Maud of Boulogne.
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Eustace, Earl of Boulogne. William, Earl of Boulogne.
d. 1152. d. 1159.

CONTEMPORARY PRINCES.

POPES.--Innocent II., 1130. Celestine II., 1143. Lucius II., 1144
Eugenius III., 1145. Anastasius IV., 1153.

[Sidenote: Stephen’s accession.]

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.

[Sidenote: Strange character of the reign.]

[Sidenote: Great power of the Church.]

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.

[Sidenote: The interest of the reign.]

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.

[Sidenote: Stephen’s charter.]

[Sidenote: Affairs in Wales.]

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.

[Sidenote: Early signs of disturbance.]

[Sidenote: War with Scotland. 1137.]

[Sidenote: Its connection with an English conspiracy.]

[Sidenote: Battle of the Standard. Aug. 22, 1138.]

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.

[Sidenote: Growth of anarchy in England.]

[Sidenote: Creation of earldoms and castles.]

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.

[Sidenote: Robert of Gloucester renounces his fealty. 1138.]

[Sidenote: Stephen’s mercenaries.]

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.

[Sidenote: Jealousy between the old and new administration.]

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.

[Sidenote: Stephen’s quarrel with the Church.]

[Sidenote: Consequent arrival of Matilda. Sept. 30, 1139.]

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.

[Sidenote: Civil war.]

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.

[Sidenote: Continued quarrel with the Church.]

[Sidenote: Robert, to bring matters to a crisis, fights the battle of Lincoln. Feb. 2, 1141.]

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.

[Sidenote: Matilda seeks help of the Church, and becomes Queen.]

[Sidenote: Importance of the Londoners. 1141.]

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.

[Sidenote: Matilda’s opportunity, but she offends both Church and Londoners.]

[Sidenote: Consequent revolution of affairs.]

[Sidenote: Gloucester taken prisoner, and exchanged for Stephen. 1142.]

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.

[Sidenote: Renewal of the old anarchy. 1146.]

[Sidenote: Appearance of Prince Henry.]

[Sidenote: Death of Robert of Gloucester. 1148.]

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.

[Sidenote: Henry’s marriage and increased power.]

[Sidenote: Church sides with him.]

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.

[Sidenote: Meeting of the armies at Wallingford. 1153.]

[Sidenote: Church mediates a compromise. 1153.]

[Sidenote: Death of Stephen. 1154.]

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.

[Sidenote: Quotations from chroniclers. The miseries of this reign.]

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 ‘lāŏ (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.

HENRY II.

1154-1189.

CONTEMPORARY PRINCES.

POPES.--Adrian IV., 1154. Alexander III., 1159. Lucius III., 1181.
Urban III., 1185. Gregory VIII., 1187. Clement III., 1187.

[Sidenote: Main objects of Henry’s reign.]

[Sidenote: First acts of his reign.]

The consolidation of the nation was the great work of Henry of Anjou. He brought to it great gifts, sagacity, masterful courage, a legal and judicial mind; while his training, as the prince of widely extending countries, prevented the intrusion of petty local interests into his views for his people’s good. The lessons of the last reign were not lost on him. Before all things he desired a strong government and good order. In pursuing these objects he took for his model his grandfather and great-grandfather, and worked out in greater and more systematic detail the policy they had begun. And though in his efforts to subordinate the Church he may seem to have run counter to the legislation of his great-grandfather, it will be seen that in many points his policy was really the same. In the earlier part of his reign work lay ready to his hand, and the compromise at Winchester had already marked out his line of action. He could not immediately come to England, being detained by an insurrection in Guienne. But when he had settled this, and, by a humility of bearing he knew well how to feign, secured the friendship of Louis VII., he crossed the Channel, and at once proceeded with his reforms.

[Sidenote: He restores order in the State.]

He renewed the charter of the City of London; fixed a short period during which the Flemish auxiliaries, who had already probably begun to return home, should leave the country; recalled grants of the royal domains which had been made in Stephen’s reign; re-established the old number of limited earldoms; and proceeded to lay hands on both the royal castles which individual barons had appropriated and those private fastnesses with which the country had become covered. Their number is variously estimated, by some it is put as high as 1150. It was not without some opposition that he carried out this work. It was chiefly in the North and West that difficulty occurred. Before the year was over he had received the submission of William of Albemarle, who was nearly independent in Yorkshire. In February of the next year he expelled Peveril, who had been guilty among other things of poisoning the great Earl of Chester, from his Earldom of Nottingham. He followed up his success by compelling the border barons, Roger, son of Milo, Earl of Hereford, and Hugh Mortimer, a descendant of the same family as Robert de Belesme, to surrender their fastnesses. To complete his dominion at home he marched against Malcolm of Scotland, who was occupying the three Northern counties. These he compelled him to resign, obliging him to do homage for the county of Huntingdon, which he claimed as a descendant of the old Earl Waltheof. Throughout all the earlier part of the reign the Scotch King appears as a great English baron, following the King to his wars.

[Sidenote: Friendship of Adrian IV.]

Henry even thus early began to think of curbing the overgrown power of the Church; and Henry of Winchester, in fear of what might happen, thought it better to lay aside his episcopal robes and retire for a time to Clugny, from which, however, he was soon induced to return. An event, indeed, soon occurred which rendered the King’s position with the Church peculiarly strong. In 1154 Nicolas Breakspear ascended the Papal throne, the only Englishman who ever attained that honour. The connection between England and the Papal See, always close since the Conquest, was drawn even closer, and the Pope made a grant of the schismatical country Ireland to the English King; a grant the enjoyment of which Henry postponed till a more convenient season. Henry’s widely spread dominions kept him constantly moving, and in 1156 the affairs of his native county summoned him to France. He left his kingdom in charge of Robert of Leicester, his great justiciary.

The difficulty in Anjou arose from the claim raised by his younger brother Godfrey to that province. This claim rested upon a doubtful will, by which his father was said to have intended Anjou for Godfrey if Henry was called to the throne of England. By force of arms Henry reduced the country; and his brother withdrew on the receipt of certain payments, being shortly after called by the burghers of Nantes to become lord of their town. This affair was scarcely settled when Henry hurried back to England, there to complete his conquest of the Scotch King, by obliging him to surrender his strong castles of Bamborough, Newcastle and Carlisle, and again to do homage for Huntingdon, on which occasion, however, the clause “Salvis omnibus dignitatibus suis” was introduced into his oath. This, with the surrender of castles by Hugh Bigod in Norfolk, and of William, called of Warrenne, son of the late King, and Earl of Surrey, completed the subjugation of the feudal nobles, and rendered him absolute master of England.

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A History of England, Period I. Mediæval MonarchyChapter VI: Introduction (5)

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