In a few days the archbishop of Canterbury followed the legate’s example and swore fealty to the Empress at Wilton.[894] She next advanced to her father’s burial-place, Reading, and thence summoned Robert of Oilly, who had been her father’s constable, to surrender Oxford castle; the summons was obeyed,[895] and she held her Easter court at Oxford.[896] The key of the upper valley of the Thames being thus in her hands, she set herself to win its lower valley by advancing to S. Alban’s and thence opening negotiations with London.[897] A deputation of its citizens were at the same time invited by the legate-bishop to a great council at Winchester on the second Monday after Easter. The first day of the council was spent in a succession of private conferences; on the second Henry spoke out publicly. He set forth how, as vicar of the Apostolic see, he had summoned this assembly to consider of the best means of restoring order in the land; he contrasted its present wretched state with the good peace which it had enjoyed under King Henry; he recited how the crown had been promised to Matilda;—how, in consequence of her absence at her father’s death, it had seemed wiser to secure a king at once in the person of Stephen;—how he, the speaker, had stood surety for the maintenance of the new king’s promises to the Church and the nation:—and how shamefully those promises had been broken. He had tried to bring his brother to reason, but in vain; and now the matter had been decided by a higher Power. The judgment of the God of battles had delivered Stephen into the hand of his rival, and cast him down from his throne; the speaker’s duty was to see that throne filled at once. He had spent the previous day in consultation with the bishops and clergy to whom the right of election chiefly belonged; their choice had fallen upon the candidate to whom their faith had been plighted long ago; he called upon them now publicly to confirm their choice, and swear fealty to King Henry’s heiress as Lady of England and Normandy.

Not a dissentient voice was raised save that of a clerk of the queen’s household, who ventured to read out a letter from his mistress to the legate, passionately entreating for her husband’s restoration. The deputation from London, who seem to have been the only laymen in the assembly, did not exactly oppose the decision of the majority; they merely pleaded for Stephen’s release, and carried back a report of the proceedings to their fellow-citizens, with a view to gaining their assent. It was not till just before midsummer that the Londoners were finally persuaded to forsake their own chosen king;[898] then, indeed, they opened their gates with the utmost humility;[899] and thus the Lady entered her capital and took up her abode at Westminster in triumph.[900]

The triumph did not last long. Matilda fell, just as her rival had fallen, by her own fault; only the faults of the two cousins were of a directly opposite nature. The Lady’s habitual temper was that of her grandfather the Conqueror—“very stern to all who withstood her will”; and her will was not, like his, kept under the control of sound policy and reason. Where Stephen had erred through his fatal readiness to listen to the most worthless counsellors, Matilda erred through her obstinate refusal to listen to any counsellors at all. She was no sooner in London than she began confiscating lands and honours and disposing of Church property more ruthlessly than ever Stephen had done; and neither the brother to whom she owed her victory, nor the legate to whom she owed her throne, nor the old king of Scots who came to share his niece’s triumph and give her the benefit of his mature wisdom, could succeed in bringing her to reason. Not a word of conciliation would she hear from any one. The queen appealed to her in behalf of her captive husband; some of the great nobles did the like; but she was deaf to their prayers. The bishop of Winchester besought her at least to secure to Stephen’s children the possessions which he had held before he became king; but she would not hear him either. The citizens of London besought her to give them back “the Laws of King Eadward”;[901] and that, too, she refused. She did worse; she summoned the richest burghers to her presence, demanded from them instant payment of a large sum of money, and when they respectfully remonstrated, drove them away with a torrent of abuse, utterly refusing all abatement or delay.[902] She was soon punished. All through the spring Matilda of Boulogne had been busy in Kent with the help of William of Ypres, rallying her husband’s scattered partizans, and gathering an army which she now led up, wasting, plundering, slaughtering all before them, almost to the gates of London. Her vigorous action determined that of the citizens. One day, as the Empress was quietly sitting down to dinner, the bells began to ring, the people came swarming out of their houses “like bees out of a hive”; the whole city flew to arms; and she and her friends were driven to flee, some one way, some another, as fast as their horses could carry them.[903] Earl Robert accompanied his sister as far as Oxford;[904] thence she hurried on to Gloucester to consult with her favourite Miles, the only person who seems to have had any real influence over her, and brought him back with her to Oxford to help in rallying her scattered forces.[905] Her cousin the queen meanwhile was in London at the head of an enthusiastic city, eager for the restoration of Stephen; from one end of England to the other the heroic wife was leaving no stone unturned in her husband’s interest, and her zeal was speedily rewarded by the re-conversion of the legate. Utterly disgusted at the result of his second attempt at king-making for the good of the Church, after one last warning to the Empress he met his sister-in-law at Guildford, reversed all the excommunications issued against Stephen’s party by the council of Winchester, and pledged himself to do henceforth all that in him lay for the restoration of the captive king.[906] Robert of Gloucester vainly sought to win him back;[907] then the Lady resolved to try her own powers of persuasion, and without a word of notice even to her brother, at the head of a strong body of troops she set off for Winchester.[908]

Of the two royal dwelling-places founded at Winchester by the Conqueror, only one now remained. He and his sons apparently found the castle at the western end of the city a more agreeable residence than the palace whose inconvenient proximity drove the monks of the New Minster to remove to Hyde. This palace was almost as great a nuisance to the Old Minster as to the New, and three years after King Henry’s death his nephew and namesake the bishop determined to get rid of it. Amid the gathering storms of the year 1138 Bishop Henry, in his turn, grew dissatisfied with his episcopal abode hard by the cathedral church, and resolved that he too would have a castle of his own. With an audacity characteristic alike of the man and of the time, he carried the stones of his grandfather’s deserted palace down to a clear space within the “soke” or “liberty” of the church, just within the eastern boundary of the city, and there set them up again in the shape of a mighty fortress[909] afterwards known as Wolvesey-house, some fragments of whose walls still stand, broken and overhung with ivy, in a green enclosure between the river-bank and the long, dark pile of the cathedral. As the Lady rode into Winchester by one gate the bishop rode out by another, to shut himself up in Wolvesey.[910] Matilda established herself without opposition in the castle,[911] and thence sent him a civil message requesting him to come and speak with her. He answered, “I will make me ready”;[912] and he did so, by despatching an urgent summons to all the partizans of the king.[913] The Empress, too, called up her friends; they hurried to her support, quartered themselves in the city with the goodwill of the inhabitants, and beset both the bishop’s palace and his fortress with all the troops they could muster.[914] But his summons was no less effectual than hers. It brought up all the barons who still held with Stephen; it brought up a troop of mercenaries;[915] best of all, it brought up, not only William of Ypres with his terrible Flemings,[916] but a thousand valiant citizens of London with Stephen’s own Matilda at their head.[917] The besiegers of Wolvesey found themselves beset in their turn by “the king’s queen with all her strength”;[918] the bishop himself ordered the town to be fired, and the wind, which saved the cathedral, carried the flames northward as far as Hyde abbey.[919] While he thus made a desert for the besiegers within the city, the queen was doing the like without. Under her directions the London contingent were guarding every approach from the west, whence alone the Lady’s troops could look for supplies: the convoys were intercepted, their escorts slain; and while eastward the roads were lined all the way to London with parties bringing provision for the bishop and his little garrison, his besiegers already saw famine staring them in the face.[920] At last they sent out a body of knights, three hundred strong, to Wherwell, intending there to build a castle as a cover for their convoys.[921] They had no sooner reached the spot than William of Ypres pounced upon them and captured the whole party.[922]

Then Robert of Gloucester felt that the case was hopeless, and that, cost what it might, he must get his sister out. Suddenly, as he was marshalling his host to cut their way through at all risks,[923] on the evening of September 13, the city gates were opened, and peace was proclaimed in the bishop’s name.[924] Robert hereupon decided to march quietly out next morning. He took, however, the precaution of sending his sister out first of all, while he brought up the rear with a small band of men as dauntless as himself.[925] He did wisely. Matilda had but just ridden through the west gate when the bishop, doubtless from his tower at Wolvesey, gave the signal for attack. The whole host of the queen’s partizans rushed upon those of the Lady and routed them completely. Earl Robert succeeded in covering his sister’s retreat, and cut his own way out in another direction, but was overtaken at Stockbridge by William of Ypres and his Flemings, who surrounded and took him prisoner.[926] Miles of Gloucester (whom the Empress had made earl of Hereford), surrounded in like manner, threw down his arms and fled for his life, reaching Gloucester in disgrace, weary, alone, and almost naked.[927] King David, it is said, was thrice made prisoner, but each time bribed his captors to let him go,[928] and was hidden in safety at last by a certain David Holcfard, who happened to be his godson.[929] The archbishop of Canterbury and several other bishops who had accompanied the Empress were despoiled of their horses and even of their clothes. The Lady herself had escaped in company with the Breton lord of Wallingford, Brian Fitz-Count, who had long been her devoted friend and who never forsook her.[930] Their first halt was at Luggershall; urged by her friends, still in terror of pursuit, she mounted another horse and spurred on to Devizes; there, half dead with fatigue, she laid herself on a bier, and bound to it with ropes as if she had been a corpse, she was carried at last safe into Gloucester.