Geoffrey de Mandeville: A study of the Anarchy

by John Horace Round

Mr. Freeman, though writing with a strong bias in favour of the elective theory, is fully justified in his main argument, namely, that Stephen "was no usurper in the sense in which the word is vulgarly used."[82] He urges, apparently with perfect truth, that Stephen's offence, in the eyes of his contemporaries, lay in his breaking his solemn oath, and not in his supplanting a rightful heir. And he aptly suggests that the wretchedness of his reign may have hastened the growth of that new belief in the divine right of the heir to the throne, which first appears under Henry II., and in the pages of William of Newburgh.[83]

So far as Stephen is concerned the case is clear enough. But we have also to consider the Empress. On what did she base her claim? I think that, as implied in Dr. Stubbs' words, she based it on a double, not a single, ground. She claimed the kingdom as King Henry's daughter ("regis Henrici filia"), but she claimed it further because the succession had been assured to her by oath ("sibi juratum") as such.[84] It is important to observe that the oath in question can in no way be regarded in the light of an election. To understand it aright, we must go back to the precisely similar oath which had been previously sworn to her brother. As early as 1116, the king, in evident anxiety to secure the succession to his heir, had called upon a gathering of the magnates "of all England," on the historic spot of Salisbury, to swear allegiance to his son (March 19).[85] It was with reference to this event that Eadmer described him at his death (November, 1120) as "Willelmum jam olim regni hæredem designatum" (p. 290). Before leaving Normandy in November, 1120, the king similarly secured the succession of the duchy to his son by compelling its barons to swear that they would be faithful to the youth.[86] On the destruction of his plans by his son's death, he hastened to marry again in the hope of securing, once more, a male heir. Despairing of this after some years, he took advantage of the Emperor's death to insist on his daughter's return, and brought her with him to England in the autumn of 1126. He was not long in taking steps to secure her recognition as his heir (subject however, as the Continuator and Symeon are both careful to point out, to no son being born to him), by the same oath being sworn to her as, in 1116, had been sworn to his son. It was taken, not (as is always stated) in 1126, but on the 1st of January, 1127.[87] Of what took place upon that occasion, there is, happily, full evidence.[88]

We have independent reports of the transaction from William of Malmesbury, Symeon of Durham, the Continuator of Florence, and Gervase of Canterbury.[89] From this last we learn (the fact is, therefore, doubtful) that the oath secured the succession, not only to the Empress, but to her heirs.[90] The Continuator's version is chiefly important as bringing out the action of the king in assigning the succession to his daughter, the oath being merely an undertaking to secure the arrangement he had made.[91] Symeon introduces the striking expression that the Empress was to succeed "hæreditario jure,"[92] but William of Malmesbury, in the speech which he places in the king's mouth, far outstrips this in his assertion of hereditary right:—

"præfatus quanto incommodo patriæ fortuna Willelmum filium suum sibi surripuisset, cui jure regnum competeret: nunc superesse filiam, cui soli legitima debeatur successio, ab avo, avunculo, et patre regibus; a materno genere multis retro seculis."[93]

Bearing in mind the time at which William wrote these words, it will be seen that the Empress and her partisans must have largely, to say the least, based their claim on her right to the throne as her father's heir, and that she and they appealed to the oath as the admission and recognition of that right, rather than as partaking in any way whatever of the character of a free election.[94] Thus her claim was neatly traversed by Stephen's advocates, at Rome, in 1136, when they urged that she was not her father's heir, and that, consequently, the oath which had been sworn to her as such ("sicut hæredi") was void.

It is, as I have said, in the above light that I view her unvarying use of the style "regis Henrici filia," and that this was the true character of her claim will be seen from the terms of a charter I shall quote, which has hitherto, it would seem, remained unknown, and in which she recites that, on arriving in England, she was promptly welcomed by Miles of Gloucester "sicut illam quam justam hæredem regni Angliæ recognovit."

The sex of the Empress was the drawback to her claim. Had her brother lived, there can be little question that he would, as a matter of course, have succeeded his father at his death. Or again, had Henry II. been old enough to succeed his grandfather, he would, we may be sure, have done so. But as to the Empress, even admitting the justice of her claim, it was by no means clear in whom it was vested. It might either be vested (a) in herself, in accordance with our modern notions; or (b) in her husband, in accordance with feudal ones;[95] or (c) in her son, as, in the event, it was. It may be said that this point was still undecided as late as 1142, when Geoffrey was invited to come to England, and decided to send his son instead, to represent the hereditary claim. The force of circumstances, however, as we shall find, had compelled the Empress, in the hour of her triumph (1141), to take her own course, and to claim the throne for herself as queen, though even this would not decide the point, as, had she succeeded, her husband, we may be sure, would have claimed the title of king.

Broadly speaking, to sum up the evidence here collected, it tends to the belief that the obsolescence of the right of election to the English crown presents considerable analogy to that of canonical election in the case of English bishoprics. In both cases a free election degenerated into a mere assent to a choice already made. We see the process of change already in full operation when Henry I. endeavours to extort beforehand from the magnates their assent to his daughter's succession, and when they subsequently complain of this attempt to dictate to them on the subject. We catch sight of it again when his daughter bases her claim to the crown, not on any free election, but on her rights as her father's heir, confirmed by the above assent. We see it, lastly, when Stephen, though owing his crown to election, claims to rule by Divine right ("Dei gratia"[96]), and attempts to reduce that election to nothing more than a national "assent" to his succession. Obviously, the whole question turned on whether the election was to be held first, or was to be a mere ratification of a choice already made. Thus, at the very time when Stephen was formulating his title, he was admitting, in the case of the bishopric of Bath, that the canonical election had preceded his own nomination of the bishop.[97] Yet it is easy to see how, as the Crown grew in strength, the elections, in both cases alike, would become, more and more, virtually matters of form, while a weak sovereign or a disputed succession would afford an opportunity for this historical survival, in the case at least of the throne, to recover for a moment its pristine strength.

Before quitting the point, I would venture briefly to resume my grounds for urging that, in comparing Stephen with his successor, the difference between their circumstances has been insufficiently allowed for. At Stephen's accession, thirty years of legal and financial oppression had rendered unpopular the power of the Crown, and had led to an impatience of official restraint which opened the path to a feudal reaction: at the accession of Henry, on the contrary, the evils of an enfeebled administration and of feudalism run mad had made all men eager for the advent of a strong king, and had prepared them to welcome the introduction of his centralizing administrative reforms. He anticipated the position of the house of Tudor at the close of the Wars of the Roses, and combined with it the advantages which Charles II. derived from the Puritan tyranny. Again, Stephen was hampered from the first by his weak position as a king on sufferance, whereas Henry came to his work unhampered by compact or concession. Lastly, Stephen was confronted throughout by a rival claimant, who formed a splendid rallying-point for all the discontent in his realm: but Henry reigned for as long as Stephen without a rival to trouble him; and when he found at length a rival in his own son, a claim far weaker than that which had threatened his predecessor seemed likely for a time to break his power as effectually as the followers of the Empress had broken that of Stephen. He may only, indeed, have owed his escape to that efficient administration which years of strength and safety had given him the time to construct.

It in no way follows from these considerations that Henry was not superior to Stephen; but it does, surely, suggest itself that Stephen's disadvantages were great, and that had he enjoyed better fortune, we might have heard less of his defects. It will be at least established by the evidence adduced in this work that some of the charges which are brought against him can no longer be maintained.