Chapter XI - England Under Matilda and Stephen

by Charles Dickens

　　The King was no sooner dead than all the plans and schemes he hadlaboured at so long, and lied so much for, crumbled away like ahollow heap of sand. Stephen, whom he had never mistrusted orsuspected, started up to claim the throne.

　　Stephen was the son of Adela, the Conqueror's daughter, married tothe Count of Blois. To Stephen, and to his brother Henry, the lateKing had been liberal; making Henry Bishop of Winchester, andfinding a good marriage for Stephen, and much enriching him. Thisdid not prevent Stephen from hastily producing a false witness, aservant of the late King, to swear that the King had named him forhis heir upon his death-bed. On this evidence the Archbishop ofCanterbury crowned him. The new King, so suddenly made, lost not amoment in seizing the Royal treasure, and hiring foreign soldierswith some of it to protect his throne.

　　If the dead King had even done as the false witness said, he wouldhave had small right to will away the English people, like so manysheep or oxen, without their consent. But he had, in fact,bequeathed all his territory to Matilda; who, supported by Robert,Earl of Gloucester, soon began to dispute the crown. Some of thepowerful barons and priests took her side; some took Stephen's; allfortified their castles; and again the miserable English peoplewere involved in war, from which they could never derive advantagewhosoever was victorious, and in which all parties plundered,tortured, starved, and ruined them.

　　Five years had passed since the death of Henry the First - andduring those five years there had been two terrible invasions bythe people of Scotland under their King, David, who was at lastdefeated with all his army - when Matilda, attended by her brotherRobert and a large force, appeared in England to maintain herclaim. A battle was fought between her troops and King Stephen'sat Lincoln; in which the King himself was taken prisoner, afterbravely fighting until his battle-axe and sword were broken, andwas carried into strict confinement at Gloucester. Matilda thensubmitted herself to the Priests, and the Priests crowned her Queenof England.

　　She did not long enjoy this dignity. The people of London had agreat affection for Stephen; many of the Barons considered itdegrading to be ruled by a woman; and the Queen's temper was sohaughty that she made innumerable enemies. The people of Londonrevolted; and, in alliance with the troops of Stephen, besieged herat Winchester, where they took her brother Robert prisoner, whom,as her best soldier and chief general, she was glad to exchange forStephen himself, who thus regained his liberty. Then, the long warwent on afresh. Once, she was pressed so hard in the Castle ofOxford, in the winter weather when the snow lay thick upon theground, that her only chance of escape was to dress herself all inwhite, and, accompanied by no more than three faithful Knights,dressed in like manner that their figures might not be seen fromStephen's camp as they passed over the snow, to steal away on foot,cross the frozen Thames, walk a long distance, and at last gallopaway on horseback. All this she did, but to no great purpose then;for her brother dying while the struggle was yet going on, she atlast withdrew to Normandy.

　　In two or three years after her withdrawal her cause appeared inEngland, afresh, in the person of her son Henry, young Plantagenet,who, at only eighteen years of age, was very powerful: not only onaccount of his mother having resigned all Normandy to him, but alsofrom his having married Eleanor, the divorced wife of the FrenchKing, a bad woman, who had great possessions in France. Louis, theFrench King, not relishing this arrangement, helped Eustace, KingStephen's son, to invade Normandy: but Henry drove their unitedforces out of that country, and then returned here, to assist hispartisans, whom the King was then besieging at Wallingford upon theThames. Here, for two days, divided only by the river, the twoarmies lay encamped opposite to one another - on the eve, as itseemed to all men, of another desperate fight, when the Earl ofArundel took heart and said 'that it was not reasonable to prolongthe unspeakable miseries of two kingdoms to minister to theambition of two princes.'

　　Many other noblemen repeating and supporting this when it was onceuttered, Stephen and young Plantagenet went down, each to his ownbank of the river, and held a conversation across it, in which theyarranged a truce; very much to the dissatisfaction of Eustace, whoswaggered away with some followers, and laid violent hands on theAbbey of St. Edmund's-Bury, where he presently died mad. The truceled to a solemn council at Winchester, in which it was agreed thatStephen should retain the crown, on condition of his declaringHenry his successor; that William, another son of the King's,should inherit his father's rightful possessions; and that all theCrown lands which Stephen had given away should be recalled, andall the Castles he had permitted to be built demolished. Thusterminated the bitter war, which had now lasted fifteen years, andhad again laid England waste. In the next year Stephen died, aftera troubled reign of nineteen years.

　　Although King Stephen was, for the time in which he lived, a humaneand moderate man, with many excellent qualities; and althoughnothing worse is known of him than his usurpation of the Crown,which he probably excused to himself by the consideration that KingHenry the First was a usurper too - which was no excuse at all; thepeople of England suffered more in these dread nineteen years, thanat any former period even of their suffering history. In thedivision of the nobility between the two rival claimants of theCrown, and in the growth of what is called the Feudal System (whichmade the peasants the born vassals and mere slaves of the Barons),every Noble had his strong Castle, where he reigned the cruel kingof all the neighbouring people. Accordingly, he perpetratedwhatever cruelties he chose. And never were worse crueltiescommitted upon earth than in wretched England in those nineteenyears.

　　The writers who were living then describe them fearfully. They saythat the castles were filled with devils rather than with men; thatthe peasants, men and women, were put into dungeons for their goldand silver, were tortured with fire and smoke, were hung up by thethumbs, were hung up by the heels with great weights to theirheads, were torn with jagged irons, killed with hunger, broken todeath in narrow chests filled with sharp-pointed stones, murderedin countless fiendish ways. In England there was no corn, no meat,no cheese, no butter, there were no tilled lands, no harvests.Ashes of burnt towns, and dreary wastes, were all that thetraveller, fearful of the robbers who prowled abroad at all hours,would see in a long day's journey; and from sunrise until night, hewould not come upon a home.

　　The clergy sometimes suffered, and heavily too, from pillage, butmany of them had castles of their own, and fought in helmet andarmour like the barons, and drew lots with other fighting men fortheir share of booty. The Pope (or Bishop of Rome), on KingStephen's resisting his ambition, laid England under an Interdictat one period of this reign; which means that he allowed no serviceto be performed in the churches, no couples to be married, no bellsto be rung, no dead bodies to be buried. Any man having the powerto refuse these things, no matter whether he were called a Pope ora Poulterer, would, of course, have the power of afflicting numbersof innocent people. That nothing might be wanting to the miseriesof King Stephen's time, the Pope threw in this contribution to thepublic store - not very like the widow's contribution, as I think,when Our Saviour sat in Jerusalem over-against the Treasury, 'andshe threw in two mites, which make a farthing.'