King Stephen

King of England (r. 1135-1154)

• Born: c. 1097
• Birthplace: Unknown
• Died: October 25, 1154
• Place of death: Dover, Kent, England

Stephen was king of England and duke of Normandy during a period of civil war and anarchy. His monarchy, described by a contemporary chronicler as “nineteen long winters in which Christ and his saints slept,” became a period of anarchy during which Stephen was unable to sustain the peace created by Henry I.

Early Life

Stephen of Blois was the third son of Stephen, count of Blois and Chartres, and Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror. Count Stephen died in 1102, at Ramlah in Palestine, and the children were reared by their mother. The eldest son, William the Incompetent, received minor fiefs in France. The bulk of the family’s patrimony fell to the second son, Theobald IV the Great, who, in 1125, succeeded to the rich province of Champagne, making him one of the most important tenants in Northern France.

Stephen, following a traditional pattern of younger, landless sons, was sent to the court of a relative to make his fortune. In his case the relative was his uncle, Henry I, king of England (1100-1135) and duke of Normandy (1106-1135). Stephen first appears in the records of Henry’s court in 1113, by which time the king had made him count of Mortain. This gave Stephen important fiefs in England and Normandy and marked him as one of the famous “new men” whom Henry used as the linchpins of his government. Stephen was further enriched in 1125, when Henry married Stephen to Matilda, heiress to the county of Bolougne. Bolougne, independent but linked to Normandy, was a gateway to the wealthy cloth trade of Flanders. It provided Stephen with important links to England’s commercial center in London and to the Flemish community in Kent.

Henry I ruled long and well and was much praised by chroniclers as a keeper of peace and a lion of justice. His only legitimate son, however, had died in a shipwreck in 1120, and Henry had only a daughter, Matilda (also called Maud or “the empress” because of her former marriage to the Emperor Henry V of Germany), to succeed him. Recognizing the difficulties of female succession, the king, in 1126, asked all of his magnates to swear an oath of fealty to her. Stephen, who was gaining a reputation as a chivalrous man, contested with Henry I’s illegitimate son, Robert, earl of Gloucester, for the honor of swearing first.

This attempt to secure the succession was a gamble. When Matilda was married to Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of Anjou, the ceremony of the oaths was repeated, probably because Anjou was the ancient enemy of Normandy, and Henry I wanted his barons to reaffirm their commitment to his daughter. The oaths were repeated one more time, after a temporary estrangement between Matilda and Geoffrey. Henry I clearly recognized that his daughter might easily face a disputed succession, and so he attempted to coopt all opposition.

The plan might have worked, but late in 1135, Geoffrey, impatient that Henry had not surrendered some Norman castles promised by the terms of his marriage with Matilda, made war against the king. In the midst of this conflict, on December 1, 1135, Henry I died. The succession problem became a crisis: Henry I’s plan was that Matilda would succeed him, but now Matilda was invading Normandy. To remain loyal to Henry’s scheme would have required allying with an invader, and to repel the invader would have meant disloyalty to the king. Normandy was in chaos, and there was no clear successor to the dead king, so on December 22 some of the leading men of the duchy met with Count Theobald of Blois to offer him the throne, but the meeting broke up when a messenger brought the astonishing news that Stephen had already been crowned.

Life’s Work

Stephen’s coronation came in part from his own dash and bravery and in part from circumstance. Geoffrey’s invasion led many, Stephen most obviously, to believe that their oaths to Matilda were now superseded by events. Stephen’s contacts with southeastern England gave him a place to land, and his commercial ties brought the Londoners over to his side. Finally, his younger brother, Henry of Blois, whom Henry I had also enriched, making him abbot of Glastonbury and bishop of Winchester, secured the essential support of the treasurer and other officials of the central government and persuaded the archbishop of Canterbury to crown and anoint Stephen.

For the first two years of his reign, Stephen was able to defeat or defer his opposition. Matilda’s supporters had to attend Stephen’s court or risk banishment to a political wilderness. Stephen did not, however, inspire the confidence that Henry I had. He besieged the castle of one baron who did not recognize his claims, but then, against the advice of his brother, let the rebels go. This created an implacable enemy who now sought safety with Geoffrey of Anjou and indicated to other dissidents that Stephen lacked the backing for strong action. Moreover, the act antagonized his brother.

More mistakes followed. Stephen attempted to neutralize the influence of Earl Robert of Gloucester, Matilda’s half brother, whose vast lands in England and Normandy made him one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. He limited Robert’s lordship over some strategic castles and apparently was behind a plot to kidnap him. This alienated the earl without really damaging him and again showed other barons that Stephen could not discipline his own vassals.

The magnates of Stephen’s reign had grown up at the court of Henry I and had become accustomed to a style of government that included swift justice and evenhanded patronage. Stephen seemed capable of neither: He was partial and unpredictable, severe to the weak and mild to the strong. This quality was fatal, for barons unable to obtain favor at Stephen’s court had a ready-made alternative in the person of Matilda.

In 1138, Robert of Gloucester defected to Matilda, the first of the great barons to do so. He drew with him several other followers, in both England and Normandy, who now repudiated Stephen. So began the Anarchy, a civil war that would last to the end of the reign.

To meet the threat Stephen reorganized his government. His first decision was to diminish the power of the church in general, and his brother, Henry of Blois, in particular, for to fight a war required the allegiance of the secular baronage, whose ambitions were balked by a powerful and influential cadre of ecclesiastics. Stephen first prevented Henry’s elevation to archbishopric of Canterbury, signaling the end of the close cooperation between the brothers that had made Stephen king. Next he took more drastic steps. At the head of the administration was the family of Bishop Roger of Salisbury: Roger acted as a justice and supervisor; Roger’s nephews, the bishops of Lincoln and Ely, were officials in both the judicial and financial administration of the realm; and another relative, rumored to be Roger’s son, served as Stephen’s chancellor. In 1139, the king fabricated charges against them all and had them arrested a flagrant breach of church law. He seized their castles and lands and released them only when threatened with church sanctions, but their power was broken. Stephen attained no decisive advantage by these maneuvers, however, and he cost himself church support. At best he managed to maintain his position in the civil war; the defections of 1138 and 1139 had not been followed by further rebellions.

On February 2, 1141, at the Battle of Lincoln, Stephen was captured by his enemies, and it appeared that Matilda had triumphed: Henry of Blois, acting as papal legate, recognized her authority on behalf of the Church. Stephen’s queen, however, kept resistance alive in the southeast another legacy of Stephen’s long association with Bolougne and the commercial centers of England. With the help of the citizens of London, Stephen’s queen was able to drive the empress west and then surrounded Matilda’s forces at Winchester. Earl Robert of Gloucester, commanding the rear guard of Matilda’s armies, was captured on September 14. Though negotiations, mediated by Henry of Blois, began at once, the rival parties could agree to no more than a simple exchange, the king for the earl.

The events of 1141 were in fact decisive, but in Normandy, not in England. There Geoffrey of Anjou continued his campaigns, and by 1142, he had taken most of the duchy up to the south bank of the Seine. Stephen was too busy to mount an expedition to Normandy. He had been there only once as king, in 1137, while both William the Conqueror and Henry I, knowing the importance of the duchy, had spent half their reigns there. Thus, Count Geoffrey’s conquest of Normandy was opposed only on a local level and only with the resources at hand; given Geoffrey’s determination, the results were entirely predictable.

Thus, in the mid-1140’, events in England drifted. Stephen, secure in the east, tried to advance against Matilda’s outposts in central England. Robert of Gloucester, Matilda’s viceroy, established a stable government in the southwest. There were frequent clashes Matilda narrowly escaped capture at Oxford, and had to flee, dressed in white, across the frozen Thames but nothing broke the stalemate. In 1147, Earl Robert of Gloucester died, and the following year Matilda, having lost her most able captain, retired to Normandy. Still the Angevin resistance in England did not collapse. Stephen was too powerful to lose England but not powerful enough to break the rebels.

Normandy was different, for late in 1144, Geoffrey captured the citadel at Rouen, and formally took control of the entire region. This had far-reaching implications for England as well. Many barons, especially the most important ones, had estates in both England and Normandy; in fact, the Norman lands, though usually smaller in extent, were often more important, for they represented the ancestral, patrimonial holdings of the family. If they remained loyal to Stephen, they would certainly lose their Norman possessions, while if they renounced him, they could keep their Norman lands and there was always the chance that they would triumph in England. In consequence, there began a slow erosion of Stephen’s support in England, a trend that would become decisive by the early 1150’.

The additional dilemma facing Stephen was his growing estrangement from the Church. In the 1140’, the king intervened in increasingly heavy-handed ways to secure control of ecclesiastical appointments, attempting, for example, to promote a candidate of his own choosing to the archbishopric of York. This was dangerous even for a strong and secure monarch; for Stephen, unable to conquer even his domestic opposition, it was a grave mistake. Stephen needed the Church to secure the fortunes of his own dynasty, for only the Church could sanction the accession of his son. He hoped to have his son crowned before the succession became an issue, but the archbishop of Canterbury, displaying a surprising autonomy, refused to comply: succession to the Anglo-Norman realm remained an open issue.

The stalemate was finally broken in 1150 by events in Normandy. There Geoffrey of Anjou abdicated in favor of his son, Henry. Henry Plantagenet was a young man of seventeen, who had already visited England twice, once at the head of a small military expedition. Though he was half Angevin, he was also half Norman, so he inherited little of the hostility that had been directed against his father. Henry had skill and ambition, and, over the next several years, he added a vast collection of resources: In 1151, Geoffrey died, and Henry inherited the counties of Anjou and Maine; in 1152, he married Eleanor, heiress of Aquitaine, and added her vast French fiefs to his own. He was, by this time, by far the most important man in France, with holdings that eclipsed those of the French king. In 1153, he sailed to England to claim the last portion of his inheritance.

Stephen’s reign effectively ended with Henry of Anjou’s arrival, though the king lived for another year. Henry and Stephen met for battle three times, yet the magnates would not fight: They had already arranged a series of truces among themselves, and now they imposed a similar program on their leaders. Stephen’s son Eustace clearly saw the drift of events and attempted to draw Henry into battle, but Eustace was ineffective in his plots and unable to turn events to his own advantage. He died in August, of grief, some said.

Eustace had been the last obstacle to peace. Stephen did not wish to fight on behalf of his other son, nor could he have enlisted any significant support for such a plan. Stephen and Henry established the Treaty of Winchester, proclaimed on November 6, 1153. By its terms, Stephen was to remain king for the rest of his life, and Henry of Anjou would succeed him.

Stephen’s last year as king was uneventful. He made a circuit of his kingdom, visiting places that had not welcomed him for fifteen years, showing himself in pomp and regal splendor. In the fall, Stephen contracted a fever, from which he died on October 25, 1154. He was buried in the abbey at Feversham, which he had founded, next to his queen and Eustace. Henry of Anjou was crowned King Henry II at Westminster Abbey on December 9.

Significance

Stephen was a weak monarch in an age that had grown accustomed to strong leadership. The government established by Henry I relied on careful royal supervision and a steady and politic touch, something Stephen did not give and did not have. He came to the throne in a crisis, but he did not have the qualities needed in a twelfth century king. Rather than settling that crisis, his elevation prolonged it, and he proved to be the last of the Norman kings. With Henry II a new dynasty, the Plantagenets, came to power.

In some ways, Stephen was an attractive man. He had been a good and trusted vassal of Henry I, and he was popular at court his elevation would have been impossible without that. Even in the Anarchy, his enemies admitted that he was kind and pleasant, refusing, for example, to execute a hostage whose father had reneged on his pledge: Stephen took the boy out and played a game with him instead. Except for the last weeks of 1135, however, he was irresolute, listening to too much counsel or not enough. He had energy but no sure direction. In settled and peaceful times, Stephen might have managed, but in settled and peaceful times, Stephen would not have become king. The conflicts that allowed his accession prevented his success.

England suffered during the Anarchy. In some places there was widespread devastation, the product of armies, foragers, plunderers. Churches, which had fewer defenses than castles, were often the target of attacks, and some were invaded and used as outposts by warriors. Even where the physical damage was small, the institutions of central government were sundered from the locales. In some cases the techniques of government were nearly forgotten, and in others they were turned to serve the purposes of local strongmen. The centralized and codified government of Henry II was in many respects a reaction to the Anarchy, and he wished Stephen’s reign to be remembered as no more than an unpleasant interlude between the strong government of his grandfather and his own.

Bibliography

Bradbury, Jim. Stephen and Matilda: The Civil War of 1139-1153. Stroud, England: Sutton, 1996. Focuses on the war and its battles, weapons, and fortifications.

Cronne, H. A. The Reign of Stephen. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970. Focuses on the whole of Anglo-Norman society and less on the individual claimants to the throne. Material on the baronage is especially good.

Crouch, David. The Reign of King Stephen, 1135-1154. New York: Longman, 2000. At nearly four hundred pages, a sweeping overview of Stephen and the civil war, politics, and institutions of the time. Illustrations, maps, appendices, bibliography, index.

Davis, R. H. C. King Stephen. 1967. 2d ed. London: Longman, 1977. One of the best biographies of Stephen. Argues that the problems of the reign were caused by the “disinherited,” men who had lost their lands under the earlier Norman kings. The Anarchy was an attempt by the magnates to secure recognized rights of inheritance.

Dunn, Diana, ed. War and Society in Medieval and Early Modern Britain. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 2000. A collection of essays that includes a consideration of civil war and peace during Stephen’s reign and earls and earldoms during his rule.

Gesta Stephani. Translated and edited by K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1976. An important narrative source for the reign and possibly the only source for parts of the reign. The author, perhaps Bishop Roger of Bath, changed his allegiances in the late 1140’, and the shift in perspective helps clarify the weakening of Stephen’s rule.

King, Edmund. The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Covers the power struggle between Stephen and Matilda, the Anarchy, and how the monarchy survived.

Matthew, Donald. King Stephen. New York: Hamgledon and London, 2002. A rare attempt to see Stephen in a generous light. The author argues that Stephen’s reputation survives largely through testimony of hostile witnesses.