CHAPTER XI

THE LAST STAGE OF THE CIVIL WAR

The victory at Lincoln changed the situation of affairs at a blow. From holding a little oval of territory about the mouth of the Severn as the utmost she had gained, with small immediate prospect of enlarging it, Matilda found the way to the throne directly open before her with no obstacle in sight not easily overcome. She set out at once for Winchester. On his side, Bishop Henry was in no mood to stake his position and influence on the cause of his brother. Stephen's attitude towards him and towards the Church had smoothed the way for Matilda at the point where she might expect the first and most serious check. The negotiations were not difficult, but the result shows as clearly as in the case of Stephen the disadvantage of the crown at such a crisis, and the opportunity offered to the vassal, whether baron or bishop, who held a position of independent strength and was determined to use it in his own interests. The arrangement was called at the time a pactus—a treaty. The Empress took oath to the bishop that all the more important business of England, especially the filling of bishoprics and abbacies, should be done according to his desire, and her oath was supported by those of her brother and of the leading barons with her. The bishop in turn received her as "Lady of England," and swore fealty to her as long as she should keep this pact. The next day, March 3, she entered the city, took possession of the small sum of money which had been left in the treasury by Stephen and of the royal crown which was there, entered the cathedral in solemn procession, supported by Henry and the Bishop of St. David's, with four other bishops and several abbots present, and had herself proclaimed at once "lady and queen of England," whatever the double title may mean. Certainly she intended to be and believed herself nothing less than reigning queen.[41] Without waiting for any ceremony of coronation, she appointed a bishop, created earls, and spoke in a formal document of her kingdom and her crown.

Directly after these events Henry of Winchester had summoned a council, to learn, very likely to guide, the decision of the Church as to a change of allegiance. The council met in Winchester on April 7. On that day the legate met separately, in secret session, the different orders of the clergy, and apparently obtained from them the decision which he wished. The next day in a speech to the council, he recited the misgovernment of his brother, who, he declared, had, almost immediately after his accession to power, destroyed the peace of the kingdom; and without any allusion to his deposition, except to the battle of Lincoln as a judgment of God, and with no formal action of the council as a whole, he announced the choice of the Church in favour of Matilda. The day following, a request of the Londoners and of the barons who had joined them for the release of Stephen, and one of his queen's to the same effect, was refused. The Empress was not present at the council. She spent Easter at Oxford, receiving reports, no doubt, of the constant successes her party was now gaining in different parts of England. It was not, however, till the middle of June that London, naturally devoted to Stephen, was ready to receive her.

Her reception in London marks the height of her success. She bought the support of the powerful Geoffrey de Mandeville by confirming to him the price which he had extorted from Stephen, the earldom of Essex, and by bidding higher than her rival with gifts of lands, revenues, and privileges which started him on the road to independence of the crown, which he well knew how to follow. Preparations were no doubt at once begun for her coronation. Her uncle King David came down from Scotland to lend it dignity, but it was destined never to occur. Her fall was as rapid as her rise, and was due, even more clearly than Stephen's, to her own inability to rule. The violent and tyrannical blood of her uncle, William Rufus, showed itself in her as plainly as the irresolute blood of Robert Curthose in her cousin, but she did not wait to gain her uncle's security of position to make violence and tyranny possible. Already, before she came up to London, she had offended her followers by the arrogance and harshness of her conduct. Now these traits of character proved fatal to her cause. She greatly offended the legate, to whom she was as deeply indebted as Stephen had been, and whose power to injure her she might easily understand, by refusing to promise that Eustace might hold his father's continental counties of Boulogne and Mortain. Equally unwise was her attitude towards London. She demanded a large subsidy. The request of the citizens for a confirmation of the laws of King Edward, because her father's were too heavy for them, she sternly refused. Queen Matilda, "acting the part of a man," advanced with her forces to the neighbourhood of the city and brought home to the burghers the evils of civil war. They were easily moved. A sudden uprising of the city forced the Empress to "ignominious" flight, leaving her baggage behind. She retreated to Oxford, and Matilda the queen entered the recovered city. Geoffrey de Mandeville at once brought his allegiance to the new market and obtained, it is probable, another advance of price and Henry of Winchester was easily persuaded to return to his brother's side. "Behold," says the historian of the Empress's party, "while she was thinking that she could immediately possess all England, everything changed." He adds that the change was her own fault, and in this he was right.[42]

But Matilda was not ready to accept calmly so decided a reverse, nor to allow Winchester to remain in undisturbed possession of her enemies, and her brother Robert was not. They had been driven from London on June 24. At the end of July, with a strong force, they attacked the older capital city, took possession of a part of it, forced the bishop to flee, and began the siege of his castle. At once the leaders of Stephen's cause, encouraged by recent events, gathered against them. While the Empress besieged the bishop's men from within, she was herself besieged from without by superior forces. At last the danger of being cut off from all supplies forced her to retreat, and in the retreat Robert of Gloucester, protecting his sister's flight, was himself captured. This was a great stroke of fortune, because it balanced for practical purposes the capture of Stephen at the battle of Lincoln, and it at once suggested an even exchange. Negotiations were not altogether easy. Robert modestly insisted that he was not equal to a king, but the arrangement was too obvious to admit of failure, and the exchange was effected at the beginning of November.

Since the middle of June the course of affairs had turned rapidly in favour of the king, but he was still far from having recovered the position of strength which he occupied before the landing of Matilda. Oxford was still in her hands, and so was a large part of the west of England. The Earl of Chester was still on her side, though he had signified his willingness to change sides if he were properly received. Stephen had yet before him a hard task in recovering his kingdom, and he never accomplished it. The war dragged on its slow length for more than ten years. Its dramatic period, however, was now ended. Only the story of Matilda's flight from Oxford enlivens the later narrative. Siege and skirmish, treason and counter-treason, fill up the passing months, but bring the end no nearer, until the entry of the young Henry on the scene lends a new element of interest and decision to the dull movement of events.

At first after his release Stephen carried on the work of restoration rapidly and without interruption. London received him with joy. At Christmas time he wore his crown at Canterbury; he was probably, indeed, re-crowned by the archbishop, to make good any defect which his imprisonment might imply. Already, on December 7, a new council, assembling in Westminster, had reversed the decisions of the council of Winchester, and, supported by a new declaration of the pope in a letter to the legate, had restored the allegiance of the Church to Stephen. At the Christmas assembly Geoffrey de Mandeville secured from the king the reward of his latest shift of sides, in a new charter which increased a power already dangerous and made him an almost independent prince. In the creation of two new earls a short time before, William of Albini as Earl of Sussex or Arundel, and Gilbert of Clare as Earl of Hertford, Stephen sought to confirm a doubtful, and to reward a steady, support. No event of importance marks the opening months of 1142. Lent was spent in a royal progress through eastern England, where as yet the Empress had obtained no footing, to York. On the way, at Stamford, he seems to have recovered the allegiance of the Earl of Chester and of his brother, the Earl of Lincoln, a sure sign of the change which had taken place since the battle in which they had overcome him so disastrously a year before.

In the summer Stephen again assumed the offensive and pushed the attack on his enemies with energy and skill. After a series of minor successes he advanced against the Empress herself at Oxford, where she had made her headquarters since the loss of London. Her brother Robert, who was the real head of her party, was now in Normandy, whither he had gone to persuade Geoffrey to lend the support of his personal presence to his wife's cause in England, but he had made sure, as he believed, of his sister's safety before going. The fortifications of Oxford had been strengthened. The barons had pledged themselves to guard Matilda, and hostages had been exacted from some as a check on the fashion of free desertion. It seems to have been felt, however, that Stephen would not venture to attack Oxford, and there had been no special concentration of strength in the city; so that when he suddenly appeared on the south, having advanced down the river from the west, he was easily able to disperse the burghers who attempted to dispute his passage of the river, and to enter one of the gates with them in their flight. The town was sacked, and the king then sat down to a siege of the castle. The siege became a blockade, which lasted from the end of September to near Christmas time, though it was pushed with all the artillery of the age, and a blockade in which the castle was carefully watched day and night. Stephen seems to have changed his mind since the time when he had besieged Matilda in Arundel castle, and to have been now determined to take his rival prisoner. The barons who had promised to protect the Empress gathered at Wallingford, but did not venture to attempt a direct raising of the siege. Robert of Gloucester returned from Normandy about December 1, but Stephen allowed him to win a small success or two, and kept steadily to his purpose.

As it drew near to Christmas provisions became low in the castle, and the necessity of surrender unpleasantly clear. Finally Matilda determined to attempt a bold escape. It was a severe winter and the ground was entirely covered with snow. With only a few attendants—three and five are both mentioned—she was let down with ropes from a tower, and, clad all in white, stole through the lines of the besiegers, detected only by a sentry, who raised no alarm. With determined spirit and endurance she fled on foot through the winter night and over difficult ways to Abingdon, six miles away. There she obtained horses and rode on to Wallingford, where she was safe. The castle of Oxford immediately surrendered to Stephen, but the great advantage for which he had striven had escaped him when almost in his hands. Robert of Gloucester, who was preparing to attempt the raising of the siege, at once joined his sister at Wallingford, and brought with him her son, the future Henry II, sent over in place of his father, on his first visit to England. Henry was now in his tenth year, and for four years and more he remained in England in the inaccessible stronghold of Bristol, studying with a tutor under the guardianship of his uncle. Robert's mission of the previous summer, to get help for Matilda in England, proved more useful to Geoffrey than to his wife. During a rapid campaign the conquest of the duchy had at last been really begun, and in the two following years it was carried to a successful conclusion. On January 20,1144, the city of Rouen surrendered to the Count of Anjou, though the castle held out for some time longer. Even Waleran of Meulan recognized the new situation of affairs, and gave his aid to the cause of Anjou, and before the close of the year Louis VII formally invested Geoffrey with the duchy. This much of the plan of Henry I was now realized; Stephen never recovered possession of Normandy. But without England, it was realized in a way which destroyed the plan itself, and England was still far from any union with the Angevin dominions.