Election of
Stephen
and coronation.
The assembly which saw the coronation and did homage on St. Stephen’s day was but a poor substitute for the great councils which had attended the summons of William and Henry, and in which Stephen, as a subject, had played a leading part. There was his brother Henry of Winchester, the skilled and politic churchman, who was willing enough to be a king’s brother if he might build up ecclesiastical supremacy through him; there was Archbishop William of Corbeuil, who had undertaken by the most solemn obligations to support Matilda, and who knew that his prerogative vote might decide the contest against Stephen, although it could not restore the chances of peace; there was Roger of Salisbury, the late king’s prime minister, the master builder of the constitutional fabric, undecided between duty and the desire of retaining power. Very few of the barons were there; Hugh Bigot, indeed, with his convenient oath, and a few more whose complicity with Stephen had already thrown them on him as a sole chance of safety. The rest of the great men present were the citizens of London, Norman barons of a sort, foreign merchants, some few rich Englishmen: all of them men who were used to public business, who knew how Henry I. had held his courts, who believed confidently in force and money. They had first encouraged Stephen from fear of Geoffrey; and more or less they held to Stephen as long as he lived. These men constituted the witenagemot that chose him king, and overruled the scruples of the inconstant archbishop. They took upon them to represent the nation that should ratify the election of a new king with their applause.
First charter
of Stephen.
Henry I. was not yet in his grave; but all promises made to him were forgotten. With what seems a sort of irony, Stephen issued as his coronation charter a simple promise to observe and compel the observance of all the good laws and good customs of his uncle.
The news of the great event traveled rapidly. Count Theobald, vexed and disappointed as he was, refused to contest the crown which his brother already wore; Geoffrey and Matilda were quarrelling with their own subjects in Anjou; and Robert of Gloucester, who hated Stephen more than he loved Matilda, saw that he must bide his time. Some crisis must soon occur; he knew that Stephen would soon spend his treasure and break his promises. Meanwhile the old king must be buried like a king; and the great lords came over with the corpse to Reading where he had built his last resting-place. There Stephen met them, within the twelve days of Christmas; and after the funeral, at Oxford or somewhere in the neighborhood, he arranged terms with them; terms by which he endeavored, amplifying the words of his charter, to catch the good-will of each class of his subjects. To the clergy he promised relief from the exactions of the late reign and freedom of election; to the barons he promised a relaxation of the forest law, the execution of which had been hardened and sharpened by Henry I.; and to the people he promised the abolition of danegeld. “These things chiefly and other things besides he vowed to God,” says Henry of Huntingdon, “but he kept none of them.” The promises were perhaps not insincere at the time; anyhow they had the desired effect, and united the nation for the moment.
First invasion
by the Scots.
The king by this means got time to hasten into the North, where King David of Scots, the uncle of the empress, had invaded the country in her name. The two kings met at Durham. David had taken Newcastle and Carlisle; Newcastle he surrendered, Carlisle Stephen left in his hands as a bribe for neutrality. It was too much for David, who, although a good king, was a Scot. He agreed to make peace: but he had sworn fealty to his niece: he could not become Stephen’s man. His son Henry, however, might bear the burden; so Henry swore and Stephen sealed the bargain with the gift of Huntingdon, part of the inheritance of Henry’s mother, the daughter of Waltheof, the last of the English earls. Then Stephen went back to London and so to Oxford. There he published a new charter, intended to comprise the new promises of good government.
Second charter
of Stephen.
This was done soon after Easter, and, as the name of earl Robert of Gloucester is found among the witnesses, it is clear that he had submitted; but the oath which he took to Stephen was a conditional one, more like that of a rival potentate than of a dependent; he would be faithful to the king so long as the king should preserve to him his rights and dignities. This was no slight concession, made by Robert, doubtless because he saw that his sister’s cause was hopeless; but it was no slight obligation for Stephen to undertake. Robert had great feudal domains in England, and all the personal friends of his father and sister were at his beck. Stephen might have been safer with him as a declared enemy. But for the moment there was peace.
The charter, published at Oxford, promised good government very circumstantially; the abuses of the Church, of the forests, and of the sheriffs, were all to be remedied. But the enactments made were not nearly so clear or circumstantial as the promises made at the late king’s funeral.