It was not yet a time when peace was possible, save at intervals; the barons and their following must needs be fighting, if not with the common enemy, then with each other. The burghers of London, as well as the barons, felt frequent attacks of those inward prickings which caused the fingers to close round the hilt and to draw the sword. Historians have not, perhaps, attached enough importance to the mediæval—is it only mediæval?—yearning for a fight. There is nothing said about it in any of the Chronicles, yet one recognises its recurrence. One feels it in the air. Only a strong king could keep down the fighting spirit, or make it find satisfaction and outlet in local brawls.
Never in this country, before or after, was there such an opportunity for gratifying this passion to be up and cutting throats. Historians, who were ecclesiastics, and therefore able to feel for and speak of the sufferings of the people, write of the horrors of war. The fighting-men themselves felt none of the horrors. Though the country-people starved, the men of war were well fed; though merchants were robbed and murdered, the men of war were not hanged for the crime; to die on the battlefield, even to die lingering with horrible wounds, had no terrors for these soldiers; nay, this kind of death seemed to them a far nobler lot than to die in a peaceful bed like a burgher. Dead bodies lay in heaps where there had been a village—dead bodies of men, women, and children, which corrupted the air. The shrieks of tortured men rang from the castles, and the despairing cries of outraged maidens from the farmhouse. The towns were laid in ruins, the cultivated lands were laid desolate, the country was deserted by the people, yet these things were not horrors to the men of war, they were daily sights. For nearly twenty years the battlefield was the universal death-bed of the Englishman; and since harvests were burned, cattle destroyed, rustics murdered, priests and merchants robbed, one wonders how, at the end of it, any one at all was left alive in England. As for the City of London, it paid dearly for the choice of a king; and in the long run it had to see the other side, the House of Anjou, come to reign over its people.
A FIGHT
Nero MS., D. J. (12th cent.).
Henry died on the 1st of December 1135. Twenty-four days afterwards, Stephen received the crown from the hands of the Archbishop. During the interval the country had become, suddenly, a seething mass of anarchy and violence. A strong hand had held it down for more than thirty years—a period, one would think, long enough for a spirit of obedience to law and order to grow up in men’s minds. Not yet: the only obedience was that due to fear; the only respect for law was that inspired by the hardest and most inflexible of kings. The words used by the author of the Gesta Stephani were doubtless much exaggerated, but they point to an outbreak of lawlessness which was certainly made possible by the removal of Henry’s mailed hand.
“Seized with a new fury, they began to run riot against each other; and the more a man injured the innocent, the higher he thought of himself. The sanctions of the law, which form the restraint of a rude population, were totally disregarded and set at naught; and men, giving the reins to all iniquity, plunged without hesitation into whatever crimes their inclinations prompted.... The people also turned to plundering each other without mercy, contriving schemes of craft and bloodshed against their neighbours; as it was said by the prophet, ‘Man rose up without mercy against man, and every one was set against his neighbour.’ For whatever the evil passions suggested in peaceable times, now that the opportunity of vengeance presented itself, was quickly executed. Secret grudgings burst forth, and dissembled malice was brought to light and openly avowed.” (Henry of Huntingdon.)
Then Stephen, crossing over from Ouissant (Ushant) with a fair wind, landed at Dover, and made haste to march to London, where he counted upon finding friends. His succession, indeed, was no new thing suddenly proposed; there had been grave discussions, prompted by the considerations above detailed, as to adopting Stephen as the successor. In addition to his reputation as a soldier, Stephen possessed the charm of personal attraction and generosity.
The City, however, as in the case of William the Conqueror and his son Henry, elected Stephen king after a solemn Covenant that, “So long as he lived, the citizens should aid him by their wealth and support him by their arms, and that he should bend all his energies to the pacification of the kingdom.”
Round (see below) discusses this covenant and the assertion in the Gesta that the Londoners claimed the right of electing the king. He compares the oath taken by king or overlord at certain towns in France, such as Bazas in Aquitaine, Issigeac in the Perigord, Bourg sur Mer in Gascony, and Bayonne. At all these places the oath was practically in the same form: the citizens swore obedience and fidelity to the king, while the king in return swore to be a good lord over them, to respect and preserve their customs, and to guard them from all injury. This oath was, in fact, William the Conqueror’s Charter. It was probably neither more nor less than this which the citizens of London exacted from Stephen. Six years later it was the same oath which they exacted from the Empress. Now, as the French towns referred to did not speak or act in the name of the whole kingdom or the province, may not the action of London in 1135 have been, not so much to assert their right to elect the king, as their resolution to make their recognition of a successor to the throne, when the succession was disputed, the subject of a separate negotiation?
