King of the North Wind

Was he a realistic contender? Even Henry I thought Robert’s illegitimacy a barrier to power, however far he bolstered him with his trust, a title and money. The author of the Gesta Stephani thought him capable of taking the throne, but that, burdened by the impediment of his illegitimacy, Robert chose not to assert a claim.

The more viable candidates were the king’s nephews by his sister Adela, Theobald and Stephen. Adela’s youngest and by far most impressive and able son, Henry, was not eligible as he was a Cluniac monk who had been consecrated bishop of Winchester by his uncle the king in 1129.

Robert of Torigni told how Theobald was asked by the Norman nobility to take control of the duchy. On 21 December, at Lisieux, they approached him formally, and Robert of Gloucester lent his support too. But although Theobald was the elder, it was his brother, the affable and popular Stephen who flabbergasted the Anglo-Norman world by his swift seizure of the English throne.

There is little doubt that had Matilda not quarrelled with her father, she would have been queen. The magnates surrounding the king would have been forced to recognise her. But as she was not there, and the nobility was already apprehensive at the thought of her taking the throne, the succession became a matter of speed.

Despite his oaths to honour her claim, Stephen barely waited for confirmation of his uncle’s death before he set sail for England. This must have been a premeditated act, long in the planning. The seeds were sown a decade earlier; Stephen could not forget Henry I’s brief flirtation with making him king. This dangled promise, however ephemeral or half-hearted, inculcated in Stephen a desire for the throne that would lead him to perjure himself and forsake loyalties to his family as he stampeded over the rights of his first cousin and elder brother. It was Henry I’s ‘promise’ that justified, in Stephen’s mind, the neglect of his uncle in those last days, and his race to England to steal Matilda’s crown.

It is possible too that Stephen may have felt providence was on his side: he had, after all, disembarked the White Ship before its short, fateful voyage. Had he been spared for this moment?

Stephen was not with Henry as he lay dying, but in his wife’s county of Boulogne – Stephen’s marriage to Matilda of Boulogne in 1125 gave him access to the wealth garnered from her vast estates in Flanders and south-east England. Stephen was evidently kept informed of his uncle’s illness – Lyons-la-Forêt was only two days’ hard riding away – which allowed him to plan.61

Stephen grabbed the opportunity. Most of the political elite were still with the dead king’s body in Normandy. He took advantage of the uncertainty to sail from his wife’s Channel port of Wissant to Kent on 3 or 4 December and was welcomed in London; he carried on to Winchester where he claimed the treasury, aided by his politically adept younger brother Bishop Henry of Winchester who helped mastermind the coup. Stephen was crowned at Westminster on 22 December by William de Corbeil, archbishop of Canterbury. The archbishop’s initial concern at breaking his oath to Matilda was swept aside by Hugh Bigod, who must have travelled with the furies at his back to give his solemn testimony of the old king’s deathbed change of heart.

Perhaps most importantly, Stephen had brought Roger, bishop of Salisbury, over to his side. During Henry I’s reign, the chronicler Henry of Huntingdon wrote of Roger that ‘he was second only to the king.’62 Roger may have been nursing a festering grudge that Henry I had not listened to his protests when he married Matilda to Geoffrey, preferring instead to consult his bastard son Robert, and Brian Fitz Count. The chronicler William of Malmesbury wrote: ‘I myself have often heard Roger bishop of Salisbury say that he was released from the oath he had taken to the empress because he had sworn only on condition that the king should not give his daughter in marriage to anyone outside the kingdom without consulting himself and the other chief men, and that no one had recommended that marriage or been aware that it would take place except Robert earl of Gloucester, and Brian Fitz Count, and the bishop of Lisieux.’63

No one outside Stephen’s immediate circle, least of all Matilda, guessed that Stephen would secure the throne a mere three weeks after the old king’s death. Stephen was now an anointed king. Although only a small number of the nobility had attended his crowning, such was the mystique surrounding the coronation ceremony that it would be very difficult to dislodge him. Life pivoted around religion in twelfth-century Christendom, and the commandment in Chronicles not to ‘touch my anointed ones’ was taken seriously.64

Matilda’s claims were dust; she, and by implication her eldest son Henry, had been forsaken by those magnates who had promised to uphold them.

How did Stephen do it? Despite their solemn oaths, most of the aristocracy were appalled at the idea of Matilda as queen. She was disliked, she was married to the count of Anjou who was unpopular among the Anglo-Norman nobility, and she was a woman. She was thrice damned. Conversely, her cousin Stephen had an easy and appealing manner, was rich and was a respected soldier. He had been a favourite of Henry I and bathed in the residual glory.

And there were the convincing rumours among loyalists to Stephen that Henry I had changed his mind. Those struggling with the moral implications of relinquishing their oaths to Matilda could feel reassured that, if they looked hard enough, the old king had released them from their obligations to a woman.

Stephen had been crowned. Even the pope had given his tacit support. Rather than risk the financial insecurity of civil war, the Anglo-Norman nobility flocked to the new king. ‘All the barons immediately determined, with Theobald’s consent, to serve under one lord on account of the honours which they held in both provinces.’65 For Stephen had bought his elder brother’s loyalty – or at least his silence – with money; he gave him an annual pension of 2,000 marks. In return, Theobald relinquished any claim to the throne of England or the dukedom of Normandy.

Matilda’s claim was abandoned by the nobility, even by her half-brother Robert of Gloucester, putting pragmatism above family loyalty – at least for the time being. In April 1136, he acknowledged Stephen as his king. He was the last to do so and his support for the new king remained at best lukewarm. Robert stayed in Normandy, living quietly on his estates, watching and waiting.

Matilda, as soon as she heard of her father’s death, raced to claim her dowry castles on the Normandy–Anjou borders.66 We have no way of knowing if she mourned, or regretted her argument with her father so close to his death, but she must have lamented the ramifications. For the moment, at least, there was nothing Matilda could do about her English inheritance. She seems to have remained in Normandy, probably in Argentan, holding on to her Norman border. It is probable that Henry and his younger brother Geoffrey remained with her. Her third and last child, William, was born in the summer of 1136.67

Matilda could do nothing but cling on to the tiny part of the Norman inheritance she had managed to secure, while Geoffrey gradually made inroads into the conquest of her duchy, forever watching his back against his own Angevin border lords.

By 1139 – only three years later – everything had changed. Walter Map, with a typical acidity of tongue, pronounced Stephen ‘a man distinguished for skill in arms, but in other respects almost a fool’.68 Stephen had had no success in Normandy. He made the only crossing of his reign in 1137, where he bought off his brother and paid homage for the duchy to Louis the Fat. But he recognised Geoffrey’s superior military force and negotiated a short truce with him, agreeing to an annual payment of 2,000 marks (the truce only lasted for a year). Despite his homage, Stephen had no power in Normandy and would never return again.

In England, within the same three years, he had alienated the bishops and much of his nobility who descended swiftly into factionalism. They had no respect for their king-duke, who had failed in Normandy and was now short of funds, having partially drained his uncle’s enormous treasury.

In the summer of 1139, taking advantage of Stephen’s weakness, Robert of Gloucester used the excuse of rumours that Stephen had tried to have him murdered to put his money and his influence firmly behind his sister’s cause. Matilda had been preparing for war for at least a year, keeping warriors with her such as Alexander of Bohon, a Cotentin nobleman described as ‘the foremost among the countess’s military retinue’.69 Now she and her brother set sail for England together.

Matilda styled herself ‘empress’, and ‘daughter of the king of the English’ to enhance her right to rule. In the coming years, Matilda and Geoffrey would work in tandem, pursuing two separate claims: Matilda’s responsibilities lay with the conquest of England, and Geoffrey’s, with that of Normandy.

The pragmatic Robert’s decision was influenced by the stunning military successes that Geoffrey achieved in Normandy. When Robert declared for Matilda, Geoffrey had made extensive inroads into the duchy. Matilda left Normandy in a much surer position, as she sailed off to England to fight Stephen for her inheritance. She left Henry and his two younger brothers, Geoffrey and William, with their father.

Matilda landed in Sussex on 30 September with her brother Robert and 140 knights, and sought refuge with her stepmother Adeliza, now married to William d’Aubigny, earl of Arundel. Robert, accompanied by only twelve men, left Matilda for his stronghold at Bristol to garner support across the West Country.70

Stephen, in a typical and naive display of chivalry – many of his contemporaries thought it his greatest weakness – did not capture and imprison his first cousin who had come to take the crown from him, but granted her safe passage to join Robert at Bristol. Their cause was joined by their half-brother Reginald of Dunstanville; Matilda’s uncle, now David King of Scots, who fought on Matilda’s behalf in the north; Brian Fitz Count, lord of Wallingford and Abergavenny; and Miles of Gloucester. She received their homage, and it is likely that she set up her court at Gloucester Castle on the banks of the River Severn, while Robert stayed at Bristol.

Matilda’s greatest champion throughout the war would be Brian Fitz Count. He was an illegitimate son of Alan Fergant, count of Brittany. He was at court when Matilda returned from Germany, and over the years he would put all his lands and possessions at Matilda’s disposal.71

He had been one of Henry I’s chief advisors, and owed his king all he had – wealth, lands, and a rich wife. He recalled his time at Matilda’s father’s court as ‘the good and golden days’, grateful that the king had given him ‘arms and an honour’.72

Brian believed in Matilda completely; at least one novelist supposed them to be in love, and the author of the Gesta Stephani noted their ‘affection’ for one another, and his ‘delight’ when she came to England.73 In 1144, Matilda, in public recognition of his unwavering support, issued a grant to Reading Abbey ‘for the love and loyal service of Brian Fitz Count, which he has rendered me’.74 Whether Matilda and Brian Fitz Count were in love, or whether it was the absolute loyalty Brian believed he owed Henry I – and then after his death, his daughter and chosen successor – we will never be sure.

Matilda combined her military campaign with an appeal to the pope to challenge Stephen’s claim to be king. On 4 April 1139, her case was heard before the Second Lateran Council; Matilda’s advocates argued that Stephen had seized the throne illegally, and that he had lied to do so. But although the pope found for Stephen, and ‘confirmed his occupation of the kingdom of England and the duchy of Normandy’, she never ceased to hope that he would change his mind.75

Stephen’s wife, Matilda of Boulogne, joined him in defending England. He still had enough money left in his depleted treasury to employ mercenaries, also known as routiers or ‘ravagers’, and much of the country, besides the borderlands of Wales and the west of England, remained in royal hands.76

Matilda’s friends were tenacious in fighting her cause. Her half-brother Reginald of Dunstanville won in Cornwall, and their grateful brother, Robert, granted him the earldom.77 But one year into the war, the country was feeling its ravages. William of Malmesbury wrote: ‘The whole year [1140] was troubled by the brutalities of war. There were many castles all over England, each defending its own district, or, to be more truthful, plundering it. The war, indeed, was one of sieges. Some of the castellans wavered in their allegiance, hesitating which side to support, and sometimes working entirely for their own profit.’78

The situation had reached a stalemate, with neither side able to gain a decisive advantage. But unexpectedly, everything changed in Matilda’s favour. On 2 February 1141 at Lincoln, in a stellar coup engineered by her half-brother Robert and his son-in-law, Ranulf earl of Chester, who brought with them ‘a dreadful and unendurable number of Welsh’, Stephen was captured and imprisoned at Bristol Castle.79 (It was one of the very few pitched battles of the war – battles were dangerous and their outcomes uncertain; most of the fighting was marked instead by castle sieges.) Stephen had fought bravely, deserted by many of his supporters, with a double-headed axe. But he had lost. Robert placed him in the care of his wife Mabel, at Bristol Castle. It was not a comfortable imprisonment; Stephen would eventually be shackled in irons in his cell.

It looked like the endgame. Matilda was recognised by the church as ‘Lady of England and Normandy’, took possession of the treasury and was given the crown – although as yet she remained uncrowned. She embarked on a progress around the country and was recognised as queen at Winchester. Meanwhile Stephen’s wife, Matilda of Boulogne, frantically attempted to secure her husband’s release, promising he would leave the country and live quietly. Matilda however refused, as she refused Matilda of Boulogne’s pleas to grant their son, Eustace, his inheritance – the lands Stephen had owned before he stole her crown.80 She carried on to London, expecting to be crowned. She was even joined by Stephen’s disaffected brother Henry, bishop of Winchester and now papal legate, who had welcomed her at his cathedral. The bishop had tired of his brother’s hollow promises to uphold the integrity of church freedoms, and was bitter that Stephen had not created him archbishop of Canterbury after William de Corbeil, Stephen’s advocate and the man who had placed the crown upon his head, died in 1136. Stephen dithered for two years, while Bishop Henry lobbied the pope for it. Ultimately however, fearing his brother’s increasing power, Stephen ignored his requests, and instead invited Theobald, prior of Bec in Normandy, to England. It was Theobald, and not Henry, who was consecrated archbishop on 8 January 1139.

But in the capital, Matilda antagonised Londoners, who resented her appointment of earls and levying of taxes. She was heavy-handed where she could have been conciliatory. Meanwhile Stephen’s wife, losing patience with the fruitless negotiations, raised an army and camped on the south bank of the River Thames, just outside the city of London. Londoners, besieged by two Matildas – one threatening pernicious taxes and assaults on their unique rights, and the other threatening them with battle – now decided for Stephen’s queen instead of their ‘Lady of the English’. On 24 June, while Matilda and her followers were celebrating with a feast at Westminster, Londoners declared for Stephen’s queen and attacked. They rang the city’s bells which notified its citizens to strike, and the queen presumptive abandoned her banquet and fled for her life to Oxford. Gerald of Wales left us with a damning comment on her failure: ‘She was swollen with insufferable pride by her success in war, and alienated the affections of nearly everyone. She was driven out of London.’ She was condemned for her pursuit of independent female power, no longer ‘Matilda the Good’.

Meanwhile Bishop Henry oscillated, disgusted at Matilda’s harsh treatment of Eustace. In the end, he did little to win the pope over for Matilda. When Innocent II ordered him to return to his erstwhile support for his brother, he deserted Matilda for Stephen’s queen.

Matilda retaliated with an army, which she took to Winchester, to besiege the bishop’s castle. But she was defeated. She fled, riding astride for speed, with her half-brother Reginald and Brian Fitz Count, while Robert stayed to cover her flight. Disaster ensued; Robert was caught by Flemish mercenaries loyal to the royalist William of Warenne, earl of Surrey, and was sent, a prisoner, by Stephen’s wife to Rochester Castle.

Had Matilda not estranged Londoners, but instead mollified them, pressing the claim of her young son, she might have been queen. Now, however, she was in a dreadful predicament. She had lost her most powerful ally.

Matilda determined to get him back, and although Robert begged his sister not to make a bargain, she insisted on swapping prisoners. On 1 November Stephen was released, in exchange for Robert’s freedom two days later. He hurried to his sister at Oxford where she had, once more, established her court.

Stephen’s capture at Lincoln, although it ultimately did nothing for Matilda in England, had an enormous impact on Geoffrey’s war to conquer Normandy. Orderic Vitalis wrote ‘when he had news that his wife had won the day’, Geoffrey and his armies hurled themselves into Normandy once more. This time, they would win.

But the war in England, with Stephen’s release, was yet again at a stalemate. Matilda begged Geoffrey to come to her aid, reminding him that it was ‘his duty to maintain the inheritance of his wife and children in England’.81 But he refused: he had nothing to offer her. All his resources were concentrated on the subjugation of Normandy, where he was in the process of triumphing through a combination of force and diplomacy, luring the magnates over to his side. He insisted, instead, that Robert of Gloucester join him in Normandy to aid his fight there: ‘If the earl would cross the sea and come to him he would meet his wishes as far as he could; if not, it would merely be a waste of time for anyone else to come and go.’82 Robert was reluctant to leave Matilda – he was aware how integral he was to her campaign – but he answered Geoffrey’s summons.

Around 24 June 1142, Robert left England for Normandy, from the port of Wareham, held by his son William, on the Dorset coast. When they met, Robert tried to convince Geoffrey to send aid to Matilda, but he refused, claiming that ‘he feared the rebellion of the Angevins and his other men’.83 Nevertheless, William of Malmesbury recorded that Robert’s visit was successful, and that together he and Geoffrey captured ten castles in the north-west of Normandy. However, perhaps aided by discussion with Geoffrey, Robert had a change of heart over the direction of the war for England. Matilda, he believed, had no hope of becoming queen. It was time to bring in her eldest son, Henry.

Robert returned to England in September with between 300 and 400 men, fifty-two ships, and the nine-year-old Henry.84

He immediately set out to save Matilda from disaster. Stephen’s forces had surrounded her at Oxford Castle that month; Robert did not have the men to bring an army to confront the king directly, so instead he attacked Wareham, which Stephen had captured earlier, hoping to draw the king away from Matilda. Stephen did not respond to the ruse, and Matilda found herself in terrible personal danger. After a three-month siege, the castle was about to fall, and Matilda’s capture and imprisonment seemed certain. The weather, and her bravery, saved her.

At the beginning of December, the land covered with snow and ice, Matilda escaped. She and the four men who accompanied her camouflaged themselves in white cloaks which made them invisible against the snow, and escaped, walking across the frozen Thames. She fled to Brian Fitz Count at Wallingford, fifteen miles to the south, who took her on to Devizes.

Matilda had not yet seen her son. Sometime before Christmas, while Brian Fitz Count offered her refuge at Wallingford, Robert was able to bring Henry to her there, where they were ‘delighted’ to be reunited. In her joy at seeing her firstborn, Matilda had a brief respite from the hopelessness of her situation.85 It was from this point, when Matilda saw Henry, that she realised the futility of her pursuit of the crown of England. By 1144, while Geoffrey had achieved complete success with the conquest of Normandy, Matilda had failed. Even Robert, having spent three years and a vast amount of money on his sister’s campaign, realised she could never be queen. It was Robert who fashioned the move to bring young Henry from Anjou as the new figurehead of the Angevin party.

IV

While Matilda fought in England, Henry had remained in Anjou, studying with his tutors and learning knightly skills. It is possible that his paternal uncle, Helias, played a part in Henry’s education, acting as his mentor.86

His parents were clever and inquisitive, both were well educated (Matilda received the greater part of her education at her first husband’s German court rather than in England), and they took great care over the young Henry’s schooling. Matilda and Geoffrey had a plan. They would provide their eldest son not only with an exemplary military and political education, but with the tools to enable him to become the Platonic archetype of a philosopher-prince. Walter Map’s claim that Henry ‘had a knowledge of all the tongues used from the French sea to the Jordan’ is undoubtedly an exaggeration; but it gives a hint as to the breadth of his learning. The languages Henry spoke fluently were French and Latin – Walter Map went on to say that he ‘customarily made use’ of them, and later he possibly learned some English.

Western Europe had never experienced such an intellectually exciting period as the twelfth century. Later historians dubbed it the ‘twelfth-century renaissance’ and it defied the Victorian misnomer of the ‘Dark Ages’.87 It was an age that saw the beginnings of humanism, a sense of the importance of the individual, a massive population shift from countryside to town, the rise of the city, the centralisation of government, and the recognition and employment of the greatest intellectuals of the day in the service of the royal administration. It saw an explosion in art, poetry and literature, particularly in the vernacular, as new fiction was explored for the first time since the classical era, and in science, theology and legal reform. It saw the beginnings of the great cathedral schools, the universities and of the soaring Gothic architecture that visually defined the age and fed the medieval Christian soul.

This quest for knowledge was fed by a ‘rediscovery’ of the classical thinkers of Greece and Rome, particularly Christian Rome after Constantine’s conversion, and by increasing contact with the Arab world and the richness of their intellectual traditions, notably in astronomy, medicine and mathematics. Contemporary writers called this movement a renovatio, meaning a rebirth or a renewal, with its underlying connotations of redemption through knowledge.

It was expected that a ruler should be well educated. Henry I and Geoffrey of Anjou were admired for their intellects. William of Malmesbury – monk, historian and devotee of Henry’s uncle Robert of Gloucester – pronounced that ‘a king without letters is [just] an ass with a crown.’88

Henry’s teachers – he had four that we know of – played an enormous role in shaping his interests. They were important not simply because they were clever, but because of the breadth and internationalism of their knowledge and understanding. Two were celebrated scholars, two we know far less about. But we do know that the experience of Henry’s tutors went far beyond the teachings of the church fathers; they had imbibed the wisdom of the philosophers, mathematicians, medics, poets and scholars of Greece, Rome, the Arabs and the Jews.