Stephen and Matilda

The Civil War of 1139-53

Jim Bradbury

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780750937931
• eBook ISBN: 9780752471921
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

Stephen's reign was one of the darkest periods of English history. He had promised Henry I that he would support the king's daughter, Matilda, as the rightful heir to the English throne, but when Henry dies in December 1135 he broke his promise and quickly made himself king. Like many of the nobles, he was unwilling to yield the crown to a woman. Civil wars and the battle for the English Crown dominated his reign, and this fascinating book examines the conflict between Stephen and his cousin. The campaigns, battles and sieges of England's first civil war are explored, including the two major battles at the Standard adn Lincoln, which show that Stephen always held more ground than his opponents and was mostly on the offensive. The two sides finally reached a compromise, after 14 years, with the Treaty of Wallingford - Stephen would rule unopposed until his death but the throne would then pass to Henry of Anjou, Matilda's son. Full of colourful characters, this is a fascinating story of rivalry for the English throne which throws new light on a neglected aspect of Stephen's reign.

TWO

THE TWO SIDES

Before Robert of Gloucester’s defiance in 1138, few men had cared to oppose Stephen openly. But there had been rebellions of the kind that were typical at the beginning of a new reign, borne out of frustrations built up under the previous monarch and now loosed to test out the new regime. However, in 1138 there was a different kind of rebellion, with the suggestion of some concerted plan. There can be no certainty about the motives of the new rebels, but circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that the supporters of Matilda were beginning to harden their intentions into action. Once Robert had made his declaration, the leading figures in the looming war, on the Angevin side, were prepared to come into the open. It was the formation of this Angevin party which made the civil war inevitable.

Before 1138, there had been a general acceptance of Stephen’s succession, but there was also latent resentment. The actions of the king during the years between 1135 and 1139 provoked some men to move into opposition. Some rebelled openly, others began preparations to join Matilda once she entered the country.

At the same time, although there was probably a majority of men who accepted Stephen with resignation rather than enthusiasm, there was also a hard core of strong royal supporters, those who were especially favoured by the new king and had gained from their association with him, those who had their own reasons for hostility to the old regime of Henry I, or dislike of his daughter or son-in-law.

The attitude of those only loosely committed to Stephen was crucial to the war which followed. For one reason or another, some of the most important among them would change sides and influence the direction of the war. Already, by 1139, some of these attitudes had been formed by the events of the early reign. Previous historians, notably Davis, have tended to see every move of Stephen in this period as a ‘mistake’, because it aroused some opposition. The fact is that any decisive act was bound to cause some opposition; this was hardly a new factor with Stephen. The hostility caused by Henry I’s ruthless and often harsh treatment of his leading barons had aroused far more resentment than Stephen’s measures ever would. But Henry had been more fortunate, at least in England, to have no leading figure who unified such resentment. The point is that Stephen did act decisively in the years before the war began, and that should not be viewed as mistaken policy, but it did provoke opposition and helps to explain the formation of the warring parties.

EARLY REBELLIONS

There were two early rebellions against Stephen, by Robert of Bampton and Baldwin de Redvers. Robert was ‘a knight not of the lowest birth or of small landed estate’.¹ However, according to the same chronicler, he was a lover of wine and of food, given to drunkenness and gluttony. Robert of Bampton’s anger was directed not so much against the king as against Glastonbury Abbey, which won a dispute against him over land at Uffculme. But the Abbot of Glastonbury was of course Stephen’s brother, Henry of Blois. Robert felt desperate enough to turn to open rebellion immediately after Henry I’s death, acting with aggression and cruelty. When summoned to the new king’s court, he did turn up, albeit reluctantly and with a scowl on his face. Judgment was given that he must hand over his castle to the king, and the disposal of all he possessed should be put at the king’s discretion. Robert had at first accepted Stephen, and done homage to him. Now, in the presence of the king, he accepted the judgment of the court.

But immediately afterwards he stole away on horseback, strongly garrisoned Bampton, and plundered the countryside around. As a result his castle was declared forfeit. Stephen himself led a force to Bampton, in Devon.² His troops blockaded the castle and captured a man trying to slip over the wall and get away. He was hanged before the castle wall, at which the garrison decided to surrender. Stephen therefore captured the castle and sent its garrison into exile; Robert himself had already fled. It was a relatively unimportant and isolated rebellion, but Stephen had dealt with it promptly, as was his wont, and effectively. The forfeited lands were awarded to Henry de Tracy, who remained a fervent and active supporter of the king. Robert of Bampton figures no more in history, except that the Gesta Stephani says he ‘met a dreadful end among strangers’.³ Some of Robert’s men found refuge at the court of the King of Scots.

The second, and more dangerous rebellion was that of Baldwin de Redvers. Although both rebellions preceded the outbreak of war, it is notable that the leaders were both west country barons. The civil war itself would take on something of a regional nature, and the west country would always be Matilda’s main base. This is well known, but is always assumed to be because of the role played by Robert of Gloucester. So far as is known, however, neither of these two early rebels had any close connection with the earl, though the Gesta Stephani makes a veiled hint that someone with the king’s own force at Exeter had encouraged Baldwin’s revolt. As the editors point out, Robert of Gloucester seems the most obvious candidate for this role.⁴ But there is no similar hint about Robert of Bampton. The two rebellions may just be coincidence, but possibly there might have been some particular cause for discontent in that area. Perhaps, for example, the famines and shortages of the period had hit that region hard. Regions where discontent against a given regime is especially strong have always been an important feature of English rebellions, and the regional discontent found in the west country and to a lesser degree in East Anglia, should not be ignored in this period.⁵

Baldwin de Redvers, ‘a man of eminent rank and birth’, was suspicious of the new king, and one of the few major lords not to come to his court or make any agreement with him.⁶ Perhaps the arrival of Robert of Gloucester at the court in 1136 swayed Baldwin; at any rate he made approaches to the king, but found that he had delayed too long. Stephen chose to make an example of him. It was probably not as bad a decision as it is usually represented. By this time Stephen had the declared allegiance of virtually the whole of the English baronage. To make an example of the one laggard would be commonly seen as sensible, and might be compared with Henry I’s treatment of Robert of Bellême. Stephen did crush Baldwin’s rebellion and capture his castles. It is true that Baldwin then joined the Angevins abroad and fought alongside them throughout the war, which incidentally is not so very unlike the conduct of Robert of Bellême against Henry. What if Stephen had made terms with him in 1136? Almost certainly Baldwin would still have been one of the first to join Matilda when she arrived. The conclusion must be that Stephen did not lose much by acting harshly.

The way in which Stephen’s actions in this episode have been treated is very strange. Stephen acted promptly, effectively and successfully. When Henry I had done much the same against Robert of Bellême, no one accused him of weakness. Stephen refused the approaches from Baldwin. The latter, not surprisingly, then fortified Exeter against the king, collecting provisions of all sorts in the castle, ‘a royal possession on which he had laid hands’.⁷ Stephen heard about this while still at Bampton, and came fresh to Exeter from his triumph there. The king at once sent ahead a considerable force of 200 cavalry, which rode fast through the night. Baldwin was annoyed because the citizens of Exeter had themselves sent an appeal against him to the king; yet another city which gave its support to Stephen. On the next morning Baldwin came out of the castle determined to plunder and burn the town, but the king’s advance force galloped in at that moment ‘with glittering arms and standards waving in the air’. Stephen himself arrived not long afterwards, and the citizens came out to welcome him with gifts and receive him within the walls of Exeter.

Exeter was an important city, seen then as the fourth in the kingdom, benefiting from local farming and fishing, and with its own flourishing trade. Baldwin, his family, and the garrison which was sworn to resist to the last, were shut up within the castle. From the walls they taunted the royal forces. They shot down arrows, and sometimes made sorties into the town. But Stephen wore them down. He captured an outpost, broke the bridge which gave access from the town to the castle, and built timber counter fortifications. Armed men crawled up the mound against the castle, stones were thrown against it using hired experts, and in the meantime miners set to work. Baldwin’s nearby castle at Plympton sent to the king, seeking terms for surrender, which Stephen willingly accepted. That castle was razed to the ground, and Baldwin’s lands were devastated, his sheep and cattle collected for the king’s use.

Alfred fitz Judhael, a man of Baldwin’s, came secretly into Exeter with men in disguise and managed to get a message through to Baldwin to give him encouragement. The garrison made a sortie and managed to carry Alfred and his men back inside the castle. It was a slight blow to the royalist force, but Stephen himself was not greatly concerned and remained in good humour. He said the more of his enemies who were locked up together in one place the better. But the siege had dragged on for some three months and was proving expensive.

Then suddenly things brightened for the king. It was a hot summer, and the springs which were the water supply of the castle, and which had always bubbled away merrily, dried up. The chronicler saw it as ‘the operation of divine power’.⁸ Men and horses within would not be able to survive. For a time the troops of the garrison were driven in desperation to drink wine; they had to make their bread using wine instead of water, and even used wine to boil food. When the royalists threw in lighted torches in the hope of burning the wooden throwing engines or the timber buildings within, even the torches were put out with wine, but eventually the wine gave out too.

The two leading men in the garrison then came out to seek terms from the king. Henry of Blois advised his brother to refuse an agreement, which he did. The bishop’s uncharitable feeling was that the two men looked thin and wasted, ‘their lips drawn back from gaping mouths’, suffering from thirst and must be close to surrender. When the king turned down the appeal, Baldwin’s wife came to him, barefoot, her hair loose over her shoulders and in tears begged for mercy. He received her with kindness, but still refused to give terms. There were relatives of Baldwin and his men in the king’s army, and those who had connived at the rebellion, and they now also approached the king and argued for mercy. They said it would be an act of royal clemency to accept surrender. They pointed out that Baldwin and his men had never sworn allegiance to him. They also said that everyone would be glad to see the end of the siege. The author of the Gesta Stephani, himself an ecclesiastic, is clearly of the opinion that the bishop was right and that no mercy should have been shown, and others agreed.⁹ This point could be debated ad infinitum, and most modern historians have taken the bishop’s side. However, looking at the matter from the angle of common practice in war at that time, let alone the merits of showing mercy, there seems no disgrace or mistake in agreeing terms. Whether vicious reprisals would have served Stephen’s cause better can only be a matter of opinion. To agree terms should normally be seen as the ideal victory for a besieger. The garrison could honourably be allowed to go, as was the case here, and in an internal disturbance, where the ruler wanted to become the authority over the defeated that was usually wise policy. In other words it was no doubt true that the garrison would have been forced to yield unconditionally before long, but whether that would have been a greater gain is dubious. Victory through agreed terms was a perfectly acceptable means of success. The main point is that Exeter Castle was now in the king’s hands.

Baldwin, who may not have been in Exeter himself all through the siege, had escaped to the Isle of Wight, where he possessed almost the whole island according to the Gesta Stephani, including the castle at Carisbrooke, whose defences he himself seems to have improved.¹⁰ He also had access to ships, referred to as a ‘huge pirate fleet’, with which he began to interfere with cross-Channel trade. Stephen was not dismayed. He left Exeter in the hands of his brother and moved on to Southampton, where he gathered a fleet to continue the fight against Baldwin.

No further fighting proved necessary. Baldwin de Redvers came to the king and submitted. It seems that the water supply at Carisbrooke had also dried up in this exceptional summer. The original well of the castle may still be seen, but it is not the one shown to tourists which operated during the time of Charles I’s captivity there and which is driven by donkeys. The older well is a simple shaft protected by a plain iron grid. Baldwin had broken no oath to the king, but he was not able to persuade Stephen to recognize his holdings. He left, landless, for the continent, and sought refuge at the court of Geoffrey of Anjou. Execution of such opponents was not the common practice of that age, so there is no reason to condemn Stephen for leniency. He had achieved his ends in the manner normal to the time. Baldwin had twice been forced to move on, and all his lands were now at the king’s disposal, including the two vital cast...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• One The Causes of the Civil War
• Two The Two Sides
• Three War
• Four The Battle of Lincoln
• Five Matilda’s Opportunity
• Six The Castle War
• Seven The Henrician War
• Eight The Peace
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Copyright