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.Not the least important of Henry sachievements of which we are sure was the peace which hesecured and maintained for England with a strong and un-sparing hand.More than thirty years of undisturbed quietwas a long period for any land in the middle ages, and duringthat time the vital process of union, the growing togetherin blood and laws and feeling of the two great races whichoccupied the land, was going rapidly forward.STEPHENCHAPTER IXBARGAINING FOR THE CROWNEARLS barons, whom the of his illness had CHAP.drawn together, the of Henry Ithe result.Among them was his natural son Robertof Gloucester; but his legal heiress, the for whomhe clone so much so much, was not there.The recent attempt of her Geoffrey of Anjou, togain by force the footing in which Henry hadhim, drawn her away from her father, shewas still in Anjou.It was afterwarcl that Henryon his her and made Stephen oflogne heir in her place; but this is not probable, it ismet by the statement which we may believe wasfrom Robert of Gloucester, that the dying kinghis will to be still in her favour.However this maybe, no steps were taken by any one in Normandy to putin possession of the or formally to recognizeher right of succession.Why her brother Robert did nothingallowed the opportunity to slip, we cannot say.Possiblyhe did not anticipate a hostile attempt.At Rouen, whitherHenry s was first taken, the barons adopted measuresto preserve to the frontiers, which show thatthey took counsel on the situation; but nothing was doneabout the succession.In the meantime, another person, as interested inthe result, not wait for events to shape themselves.Stephen of Boulogne had been a favourite nephew of Henry Ia favourite at his uncle s court, and he had beenrichly for.The county of Mortain, usually held FOR THE CROWNCHAP.by some member of the house, had been given him;he had shared in the confiscated lands of the house ofand he had been married to the heiress of thepractically independent county of which carriedwith it a rich inheritance in England.Henry might verywell believe that gratitude would secure from Stephen asfaithful a support of his daughter s cause as he expectedfrom her brother Robert.But in this he was mistaken.Stephen acted so promptly on the news of his uncle s deaththat he must already have decided what his action would be.When he heard that his uncle had died, Stephen crossedat once to England.Dover and Canterbury were held bygarrisons of Earl Robert s and refused him admittance, buthe pushed on by them to London.There he was receivedwith welcome by the citizens.London was in a situationto hail the coming of any one who promised to re-establishorder and security, and this was clearly the motive on whichA reign of dis-the Londoners acted in all that followed.order had begun as soon as it was known that the king wasdead, as frequently happened in the medieval state, for thepower that enforced the law, or perhaps that gave validityeven to the law and to the commissions of those who executedit, was suspended while the throne was vacant.A greatcommercial city, such as London had grown to be duringthe long reign of Henry, would suffer in all its interests fromsuch a state of things.Indeed, it appears that a body ofplunderers, under one who had been a servant of the lateking s, had established themselves not far from the city, andwere by their operations manufacturing pressing argumentsin of the immediate re-establishment of order.It isnot necessary to seek for any further explanation of the wel-come which London extended to Stephen.Immediately onhis arrival a council was held in the city, probably the gov-erning body of the city, the municipal council if we may socall it, which determined what should be done.Negotiationswere not difficult between parties thus situated, and an agree-ment was speedily reached.The city bound itself to recog-nize Stephen as king, and he promised to put down disorderand maintain security.Plainly from the account we have ofthis arrangement, it was a bargain, a kind of business ACCEPTStract; and Stephen proceeded at once to show that he in- CHAP.tended to keep his side of it by dispersing the robber bandwhich was annoying the city and hanging its captain.It is unnecessary to take seriously the claim of a specialright to fill the throne when it was vacant, which the citizensof London advanced for themselves according to a contempo-rary historian of these This is surely less a claimof the citizens than one invented for them by a partisan whowishes to make Stephen s position appear as strong as pos-and no one at the time paid any attention to it.Having secured the support of London, after what canhave been only a few days stay, Stephen went immedi-ately to Winchester.Before he could really believe himselfking, he had to secure the royal treasures and more sup-port than he had yet gained.Stephen s own brotherHenry, who owed his promotion in the Church, as Stephendid his in the State, to his uncle, was at this time Bishopof Winchester and it was due to him, as a contempo-rary declares, that the plan of Stephen succeeded, and thereal decision of the question was made, not at London, butat Henry went out with the citizens of Win-chester to meet his brother on his approach, and he was wel-comed as he had been at London.Present there or comingin soon after, were the Archbishop William of Canterbury,Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, the head of King Henry s admin-istrative system, and seemingly a few, but not many, barons.On the question of making Stephen king, the good, thoughnot strong, Archbishop of Canterbury, was greatly troubledby the oath which had been sworn in the interest of Matilda. There are not enough of us here, his words seem to mean, to decide upon so important a step as recognizing this manas king, when we are bound by oath to recognize another.Though our evidence is derived from clerical writers, whomight exaggerate the importance of the point, it seemsclear from a number of reasons that this oath to Matilda wasreally the greatest difficulty in Stephen s way.That ittroubled the conscience of the lay world very much doesnot appear, nor that it was regarded either in Normandy orEngland as settling the succession.If the Norman baronssec.VOL.II. FOR THE CROWNbound by this oath as well as the English, as isIXaltogether probable, they certainly acted as if they consideredthe field clear for other candidates.But it is evident thatthe oath was the first and greatest difficulty to be overcomein securing for Stephen the support of the Church, and thiswas indispensable to his success.The active condemnationof the breaking of this oath survived for a long time in theChurch, and with characteristic medieval logic the fate ofthose few who violated their oaths and met some evil endwas pointed to as a direct vengeance of God, while that thefortunate majority of the faithless is passed over in silence,including the chief traitor Hugh Bigod, who, as Robert ofGloucester afterwards declared, had twice sworn falsely, andmade of perjury an elegantIf the scruples of the archbishop were to be overcome, itcould not be done by increasing the number of those whowere present to agree to the accession of Stephen [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]