No compromise between the contending parties was as yet thought of; the smouldering ashes of civil war were raked together, and England was tortured as if with a slow fire; for the flames were not brought to a head in any one place, and no decisive action was fought, but a succession of skirmishes and forays, petty sieges, and the burning of defenceless towns and villages kept people on the rack in nearly every part of the land at once. "All England," says a contemporary, "wore a face of woe and desolation. Multitudes abandoned their beloved country to wander in a foreign land: others, forsaking their own houses, built wretched huts in the church-yards, hoping that the sacredness of the place would afford them some protection." This last miserable hope was generally vain, for the belligerents no more respected the houses of God than they did the abodes of humble men. They seized and fortified the best of the churches; and the belfry towers, from which the sweet sounds of the church-bells were wont to proceed, were converted into fortresses, and furnished with engines of war; they dug fosses in the very cemeteries, so that the bodies of the dead were brought again to light, and the miserable remains of mortality trampled upon and scattered all about. At an early period of the contest both parties had engaged foreign mercenaries; and, in the absence of regular pay and provision, and of all discipline, bands of Brabanters and Flemings prowled through the land, satisfying all their appetites in the most brutal manner. So general was the discouragement of the suffering people, that whenever only two or three horsemen were seen approaching a village or open burgh, all the inhabitants fled to conceal themselves. So extreme were their sufferings that their complaints amounted to impiety, for, seeing all these crimes and atrocities going on without check or visible judgment, men said openly that Christ and his saints had fallen asleep.*

cester should be exchanged for King Stephen. | ceeded to excommunicate all those who remained The interval had been filled up by unspeakable attached to the party he had just quitted. The misery to the people; but, as far as the principals curse and interdict were extended to all who were concerned, the two parties now stood as should build new castles, or invade the rights and they did previously to the battle of Lincoln. The privileges of the church, and (a most idle proclergy, and particularly the legate who had alter- vision!) to all who should wrong the poor and nately sided with each, found themselves in an defenceless.' embarrassing position; but the brother of Stephen had an almost unprecedented strength of face. He summoned a great ecclesiastical council, which met at Westminster on the 7th of December, and he there produced a letter from the pope, ordering him to do all in his power to effect the liberation of his brother. This letter was held as a sufficient justification of all the measures he had recently adopted. Stephen then addressed the assembly, briefly and moderately complaining of the wrongs and hardships he had sustained from his vassals, unto whom he had never denied justice when they asked for it; and adding, that if it would please the nobles of the realm to aid him with men and money, he trusted so to work as to relieve them from the fear of a shameful submission to the yoke of a woman; a thing which at first they seemed much to mislike, and which now, to their great grief, they had by experience found to be intolerable. At last the legate himself rose to speak, and, as he had with a very few exceptions the same audience as in the synod assembled at Winchester only nine months before, when he pronounced the dethronement of his own brother, and hurled the thunders of excommunication against his friends and adherents, his speech must have produced a singular effect. He pleaded that it was through force, and not out of conviction or good-will, that he had supported the cause of Matilda, who subsequently had broken all her engagements with him, and even made attempts against his liberty and life. He was thus, he maintained, freed from his oaths to the Countess of Anjou, for he no longer deigned to style her by a higher title. The judgment of Heaven, he said, was visible in the punishment of her perfidy, and God himself now restored the rightful King Stephen to his throne. Though there were some jealousies already existing between him and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the council went with the legate, and no objection was started save by a solitary During Stephen's captivity, Mavoice, which boldly asserted, in the name of tilda's husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, Matilda, that the legate himself had caused all reduced nearly the whole of Normandy, and the calamities which had happened that he had invited her into England-that he had planned the expedition in which Stephen was takenand that it was by his advice that the empress had loaded his brother with chains. The imperturbable legate heard these open accusations withou: any apparent emotion either of shame or anger; and with the greatest composure pro

A.D. 1142.

1 Gervase; Malmesb. The honest and judicious monk or Malmesbury says, "I cannot relate the transactions of this coun cil with that exact veracity with which I did the former, as ! was not present at it." He tells us that the legate "commanded, therefore, on the part of God and the pope, that they should strenuously assist the king, anointed by the will of the nation and with the approbation of the Holy See; and that such as disturbed

municated, with the exception of herself, who was sovereign of the Angevins." 2 Gesta Steph. & Ibid.

the peace in favour of the Countess of Anjou should be excom

• Chron. Saz.

The

prevailed upon the majority of the resident no- | del, and persevered in the operations of the siege bles to acknowledge Prince Henry (his son by or blockade in a winter of extraordinary severity; Matilda) as their legitimate duke. The king's and so intent was he on his purpose that he would party thus lost all hope of aid and assistance from not permit his attention to be distracted even beyond sea; but, as they were masters of the when informed that the Earl of Gloucester and coasts of the island, they were able to prevent Prince Henry had landed in England. the arrival of any considerable reinforcement to castle was strong, but when the siege had lasted their adversaries. Matilda pressed her husband some three months, Matilda again found herself to come to her assistance with all the forces he in danger of starvation, to escape which she had could raise; but Geoffrey declined the invitation recourse to another of her furtive flights. On on the ground that he had not yet made himself the 20th of December, a little after midnight, sure of Normandy; but he offered to send over she dressed herself in white, and, accompanied Prince Henry. Even on this point he showed no by three knights in the same attire, stole out of great readiness, and several months were lost ere the castle by a postern gate. The ground being he would intrust his son to the care of the Earl covered with deep snow, the party passed unobof Gloucester, whom Matilda had sent into Nor- served, and the Thames being frozen over, afmandy. forded them a safe and direct passage. Matilda pursued her course on foot as far as the town of Abingdon, where, finding horses, the party mounted, and she rode on to Wallingford, at or near to which place she was soon after joined by the Earl of Gloucester and her young son, who were now at the head of a considerable force. The day after Matilda's flight Oxford Castle surrendered to the king; but the king himself was defeated by the Earl of Gloucester at Wilton, in the following month of July, and, with his brother the legate, narrowly escaped being made prisoner.

Meanwhile Stephen, who had recovered from a long and dangerous illness, marched in person to Oxford, where the empress had fixed her court, and invested that city, with a firm resolution of never moving thence until he had got his troublesome rival into his hands. At his first approach, the garrison came out to meet him: these enemies he put to flight, and pursued them so hotly, that he entered the city pell-mell with them. Matilda

TOWER OF OXFORD CASTLE.-J. 8. Prout, from his sketch on the spot.

After the affair of Wilton no military operation deserving of notice occurred for three years, during which Stephen's party prevailed in all the east; Matilda's maintained their ground in the west; and the young prince was shut up for safety in the strong castle of Bristol, where, at his leisure moments, his uncle, the Earl of Gloucester, who enjoyed, like his father, Henry Beauclerk, the reputation of being a learned person, attended to his education. The presence of the boy in England was of no use whatever to his mother's or his own cause, and about the feast of Whitsuntide, 1147, he returned to his father Geoffrey in Normandy. Gloucester died of a fever in the month of October; and thus, deprived of son and brother, and depressed also by the loss of the Earl of Hereford, and other stanch partizans, who fell the victims of disease, the masculine resolution of Matilda gave way, and, after a struggle

Conqueror, and finished in 1073. By digging deep trenches he caused the river to surround it like a moat; and, according to Agas's map, it appears to have been a fortress of extraordinary strength and extent. At its entrance from the city, which was on the south-east side, was a large bridge, which led by a long and broad entry to the chief gate of the castle. On one side of

then retired into the castle, and the victor's troops the castle was a barbican or watch-tower; and within the walls

1 Oxford Castle was situated at the west end of the city; its site is now occupied by the county jail. A castle was founded here in 1071 by Robert D'Oilli, at the command of William the

were a church and convent dedicated to St. George, founded by Robert D'Oilli. The towers at the west end were pulled down when the castle was made a garrison by the Parliament, during the great Civil War; and the whole fortification, with the exception of the tower represented in the cut, was demolished in

1652.

of eight years, she quitted England and retired | a state of things which men could not bear, and to Normandy. After her departure, Stephen Stephen was compelled to seek a reconciliation

with the archbishop. About

two years after this reconciliation, a general council of the high clergy was held at London; and Stephen, who, in the interval, had endeavoured to win the hearts of the bishops and abbots with donations to the church, and promises of much greater things when the kingdom should be settled, required them to recognize and anoint his eldest son, Eustace, as his successor. This the Archbishop of Canterbury resolutely and most unceremoniously refused to do. He had consulted, he said, his spiritual master, and the pope had told him that Stephen

was an usurper, and therefore could not, like a legitimate sovereign, transmit his crown to his posterity. It was quite natural, and perhaps excusable, that Stephen, on thus hearing his rights called in question by a man who had sworn allegiance to him, should be overcome by a momentary rage (and it was not more in effect), and order his guards to arrest the bishops and seize their temporalities. But putting aside the question of right, and however much they may have failed in the respect due to one who was their king at the time, the prelates, in acting as they did, indubitably took a most prudent and wise view of the case, and adopted a system which was calculated to narrow the limits of civil war.

CRYPT OF BRISTOL CASTLE.-J. S. Prout, from his sketch on the spot. endeavoured to get possession of all the baronial castles, and to reduce the nobles to a proper degree of subordination; but the measures he adopted were, in some instances, characterized by craft, if not treachery; and his too openly avowed purpose of curbing the power and license of the nobility was as unpalatable to his own adherents as to the friends of Matilda. At the same time he involved himself in a fresh quarrel with the church, and that, too, at a moment when his brother, the legate, and Bishop of Winchester, had lost his great authority through the death of the pope, who patronized him, and the election of another pope, who took away his legatine office, and espoused the quarrel of his now declared enemy, Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury.

For attending the council of Rheims, against the express orders of the king, the archbishop was exiled. Caring little for this sentence, Theobald went (A.D. 1148) and put himself under the protection of Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, who was of the Angevin faction, and then published a sentence of interdict against Stephen's party and all that part of the kingdom that acknowledged the rule of the usurper. Instantly, in one half of the kingdom, all the churches were closed, and the priests and monks either withdrew, or refused to perform any of the offices of religion. This was

The only surviving vestige of Bristol Castle is the crypt. The castle is not specified in Doomsday Book, and the period of

its origin is unknown; but it is surmised to have been built, together with the second wall round the town, by Godfrey, Bishop of Exeter, one of the followers of the Conqueror. The first historical notice of it occurs on the death of William I.,

when it was fortified and held by Godfrey on behalf of Robert, the Conqueror's eldest son.

As long as the contest lay between Stephen on the one side and a woman and a boy on the other, it was likely to be, on the whole, favourable to the former. But time had worked its changes; Prince Henry was no longer a boy, but a handsome, gallant young man, capable of performing all the duties of a knight and soldier, and gifted with precocious abilities and political acumen. He had also become, by inheritance and marriage, one of the most powerful princes on the Continent. When Henry Plantagenet left Bristol Castle he was about fourteen years of age. In A.D. 1149, having attained the military age of sixteen, he recrossed the seas and landed in Scotland, in order to receive the honour of knighthood at the hands of his mother's uncle, King David. The ceremony was performed with great pomp in "merry Carlisle," where the Scottish king then kept his court: crowds of nobles from most parts of England, as well as from Scotland and Normandy, were present, and had the oppor

tunity of remarking Henry's many eminent qua-
lities; and as that prince had only been returned
to the Continent some twelve months when Ste- |
phen assembled the council for the anointing of
his son, the impressions made by the fortunate
Plantagenet were still fresh, and his character
was naturally contrasted with that of Prince
Eustace, who was about his own age, but who
does not appear to have had one of his high en-
dowments. Shortly after his return from Car-
lisle, Henry was put in full possession of the
government of Normandy; by the decease of his
father Geoffrey, who died in the course of
the same year (1150), he succeeded to the
carldom of Anjou; and in 1152, together with
the hand of Eleanor, the divorced queen of
Louis VII. of France, he acquired her rights
over the earldom of Poictou and the vast duchy
of Guienne or Aquitaine, which had descended
to her from her father. The Plantagenet party
in England recovered their spirits at the pro-
spect of this sudden aggrandizement, and think-
ing no more of the mother, they determined
to call in the son to reign in his own right.
The Earl of Chester passed over to Normandy,
to express what he called the unanimous will
of the nation; but the King of France formed
an alliance with King Stephen, Theobald, Earl
of Blois, and Geoffrey of Anjou, Henry's
younger brother, and marched a French army
to the confines of Normandy. This attempt oc-
casioned some delay; but as soon as Henry ob-
tained a truce on the Continent, he sailed for
England with a small fleet. The army he brought
over with him did not exceed 140 knights and
3000 foot, but it was well appointed and discip-
lined; and as soon as he landed in England most
of the old friends of his family flocked to join
his standard. It was unexpectedly found, how-
ever, that Stephen was still strong in the affec-
tions and devotion of a large party. The armies
of the competitors came in sight of each other at
Wallingford that of Stephen, who had marched
from London, occupying the left bank of the
Thames, and that of Henry, who had advanced
from Marlborough, the right. They lay facing
each other during two whole days, and were
hourly expecting a sanguinary engagement; but
the pause had given time for salutary reflection,
and the Earl of Arundel had the boldness to say
that it was an unreasonable thing to prolong the
calamities of a whole nation on account of the
ambition of two princes.
Many lords of both
parties, who were of the same opinion, or wearied
at length with a struggle which had already
lasted fifteen years, laboured to persuade both
princes to come to an amicable arrangement.
The two chiefs consented; and in a short conver-
sation which they carried on with one another

across a narrow part of the Thames, Stephen and Henry agreed to a truce, during which each expressed his readiness to negotiate a lasting peace. On this, Prince Eustace, who was probably well aware that the first article of the treaty would seal his exclusion from the throne, burst away from his father in a paroxysm of rage, and went into the east to get up a war on his own account. The rash young man took forcible possession of the abbey of St. Edmundsbury, and laid waste or plundered the country round about, not excepting even the lands of the abbot. His licentious

GATE OF THE ABBEY CHURCH, St. Edmundsbury.-From a view by Mackenzie.

career was very brief, for, as he was sitting down to a riotous banquet, he was suddenly seized with a frenzy, of which he soon died."

The principal obstacle to concession from Stephen was thus removed, for though he had another legitimate son, Prince William, he was but a boy, and was docile and unambitious. The principal negotiators, who with great ability and address reconciled the conflicting interests of the two factions, were Theobald, the Archbishop of Canter

trance to the monastery church. It is a quadrangular building, 80 ft. high. Near the base on the western face are two bass-reliefs, and Eve entwined with a serpent, and the other, typical of the deliverance of mankind, represents God the Father surrounded by cherubim. Within the arch are various grotesque figures.

one representing mankind after the fall by the figures of Adam

2 Writers of a later period introduced some confusion in this matter by accounting for his death in different ways. Some of them said Eustace was drowned.

Henry returned to the Continent, and on the following 25th of October (1154), Stephen died at Dover, in the fiftieth year of his age. He was buried by the side of his wife, Maud, who died

bury, and Henry, Bishop of Winchester, Stephen's visited together the cities of Winchester, Lonbrother, who played so many parts in this long don, and Oxford, in which places solemn procesand checkered drama. On the 7th of November, sions were made, and both princes were received 1153, a great council of the kingdom was held at with acclamations by the people. At the end Winchester, where a peace was finally adjusted of Lent they parted with expressions of mutual on the following conditions:-Stephen, who was to friendship. retain undisturbed possession of the crown during his life, adopted Henry as his son, appointed him his successor, and gave the kingdom, after his own death, to Henry and his heirs for ever. In return Henry did present homage, and swore fealty to Stephen. Henry received the homage of the king's surviving son William, and, in return, gave that young prince all the estates and honours, whether in England or on the Continent, which his father Stephen had enjoyed before he ascended the throne; and Henry promised, as a testimonial of his own affection, the honour of Pevensey, together with some manors in Kent. There then followed a mighty interchange and duplication of oaths among the earls, barons, bishops, and abbots of both fac

tions, all swearing present allegiance to Stephen, three years before him, at the monastery of Fa and future fealty to Henry.' versham, in the pleasant county of Kent, which After signing the treaty, Stephen and Henry she had loved so much while living.

CHAPTER V.-CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY.-A.D. 1154-1172.

HENRY II., SURNAMED PLANTAGENET.-ACCESSION, A.D. 1154-DEATH, A.D. 1189.

Succession of Henry II., surnamed Plantagenet-History of his queen, Eleanor-Henry's reforms at the begin ning of his reign-His resumption of crown lands, and suppression of the barons-He invades Maine and Anjou -His successful war in Wales-His acquisitions on the Continent-His war with the French king-Exploits of Thomas à Becket in the war-Previous career of Becket-He becomes Archbishop of Canterbury-His altered behaviour on becoming primate-Commencement of his quarrels with Henry-Struggles of Becket for the privileges of the clergy-He is worsted by the king-Becket's strange visit to the court at NorthamptonHe retreats to France-Henry's vindictive proceedings against him-Henry's unsuccessful campaign in Wales -His successes on the Continent-He is excommunicated by Becket-Attempts of the French king to reconcile Henry and Becket-Becket returns to England-His triumphant reception by the people-Henry's rage at the tidings-Assassination of Thomas à Becket-Henry's attempts to free himself from suspicion.

1 Rymer's Fœdera.

HEN Henry Plantagenet re- | reduced some turbulent continental vassals to ceived the news of Stephen's obedience, before he went to the coast to embark death, he was engaged in the siege of a castle on the frontiers of Normandy. Relying on the situation of affairs in England, and the disposition of men's minds in his favour, he prosecuted the siege to a successful close, and

2 This abbey was built and endowed by Stephen; and himself, his queen Maud, and his eldest son Eustace of Boulogne, were buried within its walls. At the dissolution this abbey was held remains of Stephen were thrown into the river, for the value of After the suppression the the leaden coffin in which they were contained.

by monks of the Benedictine order.