Stephen’s promptitude served him as well as the promptitude of William Rufus and Henry had served them in a like case. But this time the part which had been played in 1087 by the primate and in 1100 by “the Witan who were there nigh at hand” was to be played by the citizens of London. Repulsed from Dover and Canterbury[670]—for the men of Kent had an hereditary grudge against any one coming from Boulogne—Stephen pushed on to London, where the well-known face of King Henry’s favourite nephew was hailed with delight by the citizens, vehemently declaring that they would have no stranger to rule over them.[671] They claimed to have inherited the right to a voice in the election of the sovereign which had once, in theory at least, belonged to the whole nation, and accordingly the “aldermen and wise folk”[672] came together to consider what provision should be made for the safety of the realm, and, for that end, to choose a king. A kingless land, said they, was exposed to countless perils; the first thing needful was to make a king as speedily as possible.[673] Of Matilda and her claims not a word seems to have been said; if any of the leading burgesses, as tenants-in-chief of the crown, had sworn fealty to her, they were in no humour to regard it now; and the citizens in general would doubtless not hold themselves bound by an oath which they had not personally taken. They claimed the right of election as their special prerogative, and exercising it without more ado in favour of the only person then at hand whose birth and character fitted him to undertake the defence of the kingdom, and who seemed to have been sent to them as by a special providence in their hour of need, they by common consent acknowledged Stephen as king. He hurried to Winchester to get possession of the treasury; the bishop—his own brother—came forth with the chief citizens to meet him; and the treasurer, who had refused to give up his keys to the bishop, surrendered them at once to the king-elect.[674]

Thus far the two men who ought to have taken the lead in the national counsels—the primate and the justiciar—had stood looking passively on. Both now joined Stephen.[675] He lacked nothing to make him full king but the rite of coronation. This however depended on the primate, and when called upon to perform it William of Canterbury again drew back. He had scruples, first, about the oath which he himself, as well as Stephen and all the barons, had sworn to the Empress Matilda; and secondly, about the validity of an election so hastily made by a small part only of the nation. The second objection passed unheeded; to the first Stephen’s adherents answered that the oath had been extorted and was therefore not binding, and that several persons who were with Henry at his death had heard him openly express repentance for having forced it upon the barons.[676] Roger of Salisbury affirmed that it was annulled in another way; it had been sworn, by him at least, on condition of a promise from Henry that he would not give his daughter in marriage out of the realm without the consent of the Great Council—a promise which had been immediately broken.[677] Hugh Bigod, too, the late king’s seneschal, declared upon oath that Henry had in his presence solemnly absolved the barons from their engagement,[678] and had even formally disinherited Matilda and designated Stephen as his successor.[679] The argument which really prevailed, however, was the objection to a woman’s rule, and the urgent need of having a man to take the government, and to take it at once.[680] Henry had not yet been three weeks dead, and already England was in confusion. The first outcome of the reaction against his stern control had been a general raid upon the forests; and when men in their frantic vehemence had left themselves no more game to hunt, they turned their arms against each other and trampled all law and order under foot.[681] Such a state of things, resulting solely from the fact that England had been three weeks without a king, spoke more in Stephen’s favour than any amount of legal reasonings. The archbishop gave way; all that he demanded from Stephen was a promise to restore and maintain the liberties of the Church. Bishop Henry of Winchester offered himself as surety in his brother’s behalf, and thereby won him the crown.[682] He received it at Westminster,[683] probably either on the last Sunday in Advent or on Christmas day,[684] and he issued at the same time, by way of coronation-charter, a promise at once comprehensive and vague, to maintain the laws established by his predecessor.[685]

Thus the two great feuds which had hitherto influenced the political career of the Angevin house—the feud with Blois and the feud with Normandy—merged at last into one. The successors of Odo of Blois and those of William the Conqueror were now both represented, as against the successors of Fulk Nerra and Geoffrey Martel, by one and the same man, who yet was not, in strict law, the nearest representative of either. We shall see hereafter that some of the Normans entertained a project of making Theobald their duke; had they succeeded, the older quarrel would have revived almost in its original form, as a direct conflict between the heads of the two rival houses, only with Normandy instead of Touraine for its object and its battle-ground. Its original spirit was, however, more likely to be revived, on one side at least, by the substitution of Stephen for Theobald. Stephen had renounced all share in his father’s territories; but there was one paternal heir-loom which he could not renounce, and which descended to him, and him alone, among the sons of Stephen-Henry and Adela. This was the peculiar mental and moral constitution which the house of Blois inherited from Odo II. as surely as the Angevins inherited theirs from Fulk the Black. In the reigning Count Theobald, indeed, the type was fortunately almost lost, and in his youngest brother, Bishop Henry of Winchester, it was very greatly modified by the infusion of Norman blood derived from their mother. In Stephen, however, the Norman blood had but little influence on a nature which in its essence was that of the old counts of Blois. All the characteristic qualities and defects of the race were there, just as deeply rooted as in Odo of Champagne himself; the whole difference lay in this, that in Stephen the qualities lay uppermost and shewed themselves in their most attractive aspect, while the defects took a form so mild that till their fatal consequences were seen they appeared hardly more than amiable weaknesses. Gallant knight and courteous gentleman; warm-hearted, high-spirited, throwing himself eagerly into every enterprise; all reckless valour in the battle-field, all gentleness and mercy as soon as the fight was over; open-handed, generous, gracious to all, and apparently unstained by any personal vices:—it is easy to understand Henry’s affection for him, and the high hopes with which at the opening of his career he was regarded by all classes in the realm.[686] His good qualities were plainly visible; time and experience alone could reveal the radical defect which vitiated them all. That defect was simply the old curse of his race—lack of stedfastness; and it ruined Stephen as surely as it had ruined Odo. It was ingrained in every fibre of his nature; it acted like an incurable moral disease, mingling its subtle poison with his every thought and act, and turning his very virtues into weaknesses; it reduced his whole kingly career to a mere string of political inconsistencies and blunders; and it wrecked him at last, as it had wrecked his great-grandfather, on the rock of the Angevin thoroughness.

For the moment, however, Stephen had outstripped his rival. The Angevin sagacity had been for once at fault. Steeped as were both Geoffrey and his wife in continental ideas and feelings, their first thought was of Normandy, and they had failed to see that in order to secure it their true policy was to secure England first; or rather, perhaps, they had failed to see that the mere will of the late king was not sufficient to give them undisputed possession of both. Stephen’s bold stroke, whether it resulted from a closer acquaintance with the relation between the two countries, or simply from a characteristic impulse to dash straight at the highest object in view, gained him kingdom and duchy at one blow. Geoffrey had followed his wife into Normandy at the head of an armed force, and accompanied by William Talvas, whose influence secured him a welcome at Séez and in all the territories of the house of Alençon. But the rival races were no sooner in actual contact than their old hatred burst uncontrollably forth. The Angevins, though they ostensibly came only to put their countess in peaceful possession of her heritage, could not yet bring themselves to look upon the Normans in any light but that of natural enemies; they treated the districts which had submitted to them as a conquered land, and went about harrying and plundering till the people rose and attacked them with such fury that they were compelled to evacuate the country.[687] The Norman barons now held at Neubourg a meeting at which they decided to invite Count Theobald of Blois to come and take possession of the duchy. Theobald came to Rouen, and thence to Lisieux, where on December 21 he had an interview with Matilda’s half-brother Earl Robert of Gloucester. They were interrupted by a messenger from England with the tidings of Stephen’s election as king.[688] The Norman barons then felt that the decision was taken out of their hands; since Stephen and England had been too quick for them, their best course now was to accept the accomplished fact, and acknowledged the king-elect as duke of Normandy.[689] To this Robert of Gloucester assented.[690] Theobald, despite his natural vexation, at once withdrew his claim, and made in his brother’s name a truce with Geoffrey to last from Christmas till the octave of Pentecost; and having thus done his best to secure the peace of the duchy till its own duke could come to it, he quietly returned to his own dominions.[691]

In England, meanwhile, Stephen was carrying all before him. The first public act in which he had to take part as king was the burial of his predecessor at Reading on the feast of the Epiphany;[692] the next was the defence of his realm against a danger which it had not known for more than forty years—a Scottish invasion. King David of Scotland, true to the oath which every one else seemed to have forgotten, arose as the champion of Matilda’s rights, led his troops into Northumberland, and partly conquered it in her behalf. Stephen met him near Durham, pacified him by a grant of the earldoms of Carlisle, Huntingdon and Doncaster to his son Henry,[693] and came back in peace, almost in triumph, to the Easter festival and the crowning of his queen.[694] Adherents now came flocking in; the splendour of the Easter court made up for the meagreness of the Christmas meeting.[695] Baron and knight, clerk and layman, rallied round the winning young sovereign who was ready to promise anything, to undertake anything, to please anybody. The only class who still held aloof were the “new men” of the last reign, men like Payne Fitz-John and Miles the sheriff of Gloucester, who owed everything to Henry, and who were bound alike by gratitude and by policy to uphold his daughter’s cause. But the chief of them all, Bishop Roger of Salisbury, had already joined Stephen, and the rest were soon persuaded to follow his example.[696] Shortly after Easter there came in a yet more important personage. Earl Robert of Gloucester, the eldest son of the late king, influential alike on both sides of the sea by his rank, his wealth and his character, was looked upon both in Normandy and in England as the natural leader of the baronage. The suddenness of Stephen’s accession had snatched the leadership out of his hands, and he lingered on in Normandy, watching the course of events without sharing in them, and meditating how to reconcile his own interest with his duty to his sister. Stephen, anxious to win him over, sent him repeated invitations to England; till at last he decided to let himself be won, at least in appearance, if only for the sake of gaining a footing in England which might enable him afterwards to work there in Matilda’s favour. The king’s son, however, made terms for himself more like a king than a mere earl. He came to Stephen’s court and did homage for his English estates; but he did it only on the express condition of being bound by it only so long as Stephen’s own promises to him were kept, and he himself was maintained in all his honours and dignities.[697] The first result of his submission—if submission it can be called—was seen in a great council at Oxford, where all the bishops swore fealty to the king, and the vague promise to maintain the “Laws of King Henry,” which Stephen had issued on his coronation-day, was amplified into a more detailed and definite charter.[698] Suddenly, a few weeks later, there went forth a rumour that the king was dead, and the barons at once broke into revolt. Baldwin of Redvers threw himself into Exeter; Hugh Bigod, who but a few months ago had been foremost among the supporters of Stephen, seized Norwich castle, and was only dislodged by the king in person.[699] He was apparently forgiven; another rebel, Robert of Bathenton,[700] was caught and hanged, and his castle forced to surrender. The great castle of Exeter, where Baldwin had shut himself up with his family and a picked band of young knights, all sworn never to yield, cost a long and troublesome siege; but the agonies of thirst at length drove the garrison to break their vow and ask for terms. Stephen let them all go out free; Baldwin requited his leniency by hastening to a castle which he possessed in the Isle of Wight, and there setting himself up as a sort of pirate-chief at the head of a band of men as reckless as himself. But when Stephen hurried to Southampton and began to collect a fleet, Baldwin suddenly took fright and surrendered. His lands were confiscated, and he went into exile in Anjou, where he was eagerly welcomed by the count, and added one more to the elements of strife already working in Normandy.[701] In England his defeat put an end to the revolt, and the Christmas court at Dunstable brought the first year of King Stephen to a tranquil close.[702]