seventh year of his age: his body was brought over to England and interred at Reading.

Henry I. was a monarch of superior ability; the Conqueror alone of his family equalled him in talent. He showed great spirit in his dealings with the church; he caused justice to be rigidly executed. "A good man was he, and mickle dread was there of him," says the Saxon Chronicle. "Peace made he for man and beast; whoso bare his burthen of gold and silver no man durst say to him aught but good." But he set at nought his charters and his promises, and he taxed his people without mercy; he increased the rigour of the forest laws, and enlarged the forests; he punished him who killed a stag as him who murdered a man; he made all the dogs near the forests be mutilated, men were even in some cases prohibited from hunting on their own lands, a great grievance in those days*. Henry was more addicted to literature than was usual among princes and nobles at that time, whence he obtained the appellation of Beauclerc, or Fine-scholar. His treatment of his brother and nephew violated all the principles of nature and justice; but when there is uncontrolled power, and a kingdom is the prize, these principles have been set at nought in all ages of the world.

In the year 1109 Henry, as a check on the turbulent Welsh, settled at Haverford-west in Pembrokeshire a colony of Flemings. These men, who had been driven from their own country by an inundation of the Rhine, applied themselves to the culture of the soil and to the manufacture of cloth, and they were always able to repel the efforts of the Welsh to dislodge them.

* Malmsbury praises the temperance and continence of Henry; yet he died of a surfeit, and we hear of seven sons and eight daughters his natural children.

120

CHAPTER IV.

STEPHEN.*

1135-1154.

Usurpation of Stephen. Miseries endured by the people. - War between Stephen and the empress ;-between Stephen and young Henry.-Death of Stephen.

In a regularly ordered state, the succession of Matilda would have followed as a matter of course, as no one else had even the shadow of a claim to the crown; but Henry himself had by his usurpation shown how a crown might be acquired without right, and there was one, whom perhaps he little suspected, ready to tread in his footsteps.

Adela daughter of the Conqueror had been married to the count of Blois, to whom she bare a numerous offspring; two of her sons had been invited over to England by king Henry, and he made one of them, Henry, who was in holy orders, abbot of Glastonbury, and afterwards bishop of Winchester; for Stephen, the other, he obtained in marriage the daughter and heiress of the count of Boulogne, who had also large estates in England; he moreover conferred on him extensive domains in both England and Normandy. Stephen always affected great gratitude toward his uncle, and he had been forward in taking the oath of fealty to the empress in 1131†. By his valour, liberality, and affable manners he had gained great favour

* Authorities, same as before, with the Gesta Stephani, Contin. Flor. and Gervasius.

† On that occasion the king of Scots first took the oath of fealty in virtue of his rank; Stephen and Robert of Gloucester, the king's natural son, contended for the second place. It may be as Dr. Lingard says, that they had both designs on the throne, but the subsequent conduct of Robert contradicts this supposition.

with both barons and people in England, and the citizens of London were especially devoted to him.

On the death of his uncle, Stephen resolved to make a bold effort for the crown; he passed over to England, and hastened to London, where he was received with acclamations by the populace. His brother and the bishop of Salisbury endeavoured to prevail on the primate to crown him; and to overcome that prelate's scruples they produced Hugh Bigod, a servant of the late king, who made oath that when on his death-bed he had declared his intention of making the count of Boulogne his heir. The primate was, or affected to be, convinced, and he performed the ceremony of the coronation at Westminster (Dec. 22).

Stephen, imitating his predecessor, issued a charter exactly similar to his, with probably as little intention of observing it; he had further, still following his uncle's example, lost no time in getting possession of the royal treasure of 100,000l. which lay at Winchester, and with this money he took into his pay a large body of mercenary soldiers from the continent, and procured a recognition of his title at Rome.

The Norman barons, moved by hereditary animosity to the Angevins, and also by the motives which had always made them desire the union of their duchy with England, readily submitted to Stephen; and the king of France, Louis the Young, received the homage of his son Eustace for that province, and gave him his own sister in marriage. Geoffrey of Anjou was obliged to make a truce for two years with Stephen, on condition of being paid 5000 marks a year during that period. Robert earl of Gloucester, the natural brother of the empress, to whom he was much attached, was the person whom Stephen had most to dread. This nobleman would do him homage only on conditions which would give him a pretext for revolt whenever he pleased, and the king was obliged to consent. The clergy

made similar reservations in their oaths; the barons extorted the right of fortifying their castles, and soon fortresses rose on all sides, filled with a brutal and ferocious soldiery. A contest for the crown commenced ere long between Stephen and Matilda, and the miseries which ensued are thus vividly described by one who witnessed them.

"In this king's time," says the contemporary Saxon Chronicle, "was all dissention and evil and rapine; for against him soon arose the rich (i. e. great) men that were traitors; when they found that he was a mild man, and soft and good, and did no justice [execution], then did they do all wonders. They had done him homage and sworn oaths, but they held no truth; they were all forsworn and heeded not their troth; for every rich man built his castles, and they held them against him, and they filled the land full of castles. They sorely oppressed the wretched men of the land with castle-works, and when the castles were made they filled them with devils and evil men; then took they the men that they weened had any goods, both by night and by day, peasant men and women, and put them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them with tortures not to be told, for never were any martyrs so tortured as they were; some they hung up by the feet and smoked them with foul smoke; some they hung by the thumbs or by the head, and hung coats of mail at their feet; to some they put knotted strings round their head and twisted them till it went to the brains ; they put them into dungeons where there were adders, and snakes, and toads, and killed them so; some they put in the crucet-house, that is in a chest that was short and narrow and not deep, and put sharp stones in it, and forced the man in, and so broke all his limbs. In many of the castles were things loathly and grim that were called Sachenteges [culprits' halters], of which two or three men had enough to do to carry one that was so made, that is

fastened to a beam, and they put a sharp iron about the man's throat and neck that he might on no side sit or lie, or sleep, but bear all that iron. Many thousands did they kill with hunger. I cannot and may not tell all the wounds and all the pains that they gave to wretched men in this land, and that lasted for the nineteen winters that Stephen was king, and still it was worse and worse. They laid guilds [taxes] evermore on the towns, and called it tensezie; when the wretched men had no more to give they robbed and burned all the towns, that well thou mightest go a whole day's journey and shouldest never find a man sitting [dwelling] in a town or land tilled. Then was corn dear, and flesh, and cheese, and butter, for there was none in the land. Wretched men died of hunger; some took to alms who were one time rich men; some fled out of the land; never yet was more wretchedness in the land, and never did heathen men worse than they did; for after a time they spared neither church nor church-yard*, but took all the goods that were therein, and then burned church and all together; neither did they spare bishop's land nor abbot's, nor priest's, but robbed monks and clerks, and every man who was able another; if two or three men came riding to a town all the township fled before them, weening that they were robbers. The bishops and learned men cursed them evermore, but nought thereof came on them, for they were all accursed and forsworn and abandoned. It was the sea men tilled; the earth bare no corn, for the land was all destroyed with such deeds, and they said openly that Christ slept and his saints. Such and more than we can say we tholed nineteen winters for our sins."

After this faithful picture, drawn by the hand of one who described what he beheld, of the horrors of feudalism and the misery caused by the usurpation of Stephen, it

* The church-yard being consecrated partook of the sanctity of the church, and people used to place their goods in it for security.