of appointing prelates. In 1074 Gregory VII. had forbidden the practice. His example was followed by Pascal II., who now filled the papal throne, and who supported Anselm in his refusal to accept investiture from Henry's hands, and threatened to excommunicate the king for persisting in his demands. But Henry had established his power so firmly in England and Normandy, that the pope consented to a compromise. Henry resigned the right of granting investitures, by which the spiritual dignity was supposed to be conferred; and Pascal allowed the bishops to do homage for their temporal possessions. The pontiff was well pleased to have gained this advantage, which he hoped would in time secure the whole; whilst the king, anxious to escape from a dangerous situation, was content to retain a substantial authority in the election of prelates.

§ 11. The acquisition of Normandy had been a great object of Henry's ambition; but it proved the source of great disquietude, involved him in frequent wars, and obliged him to impose on his English subjects those heavy and arbitrary taxes of which the historians of that age complain. The cause of William, the son of Robert, was espoused by Louis the Fat, king of France, and by other continental princes. The wars which ensued required Henry's frequent presence in Normandy; and, though he was generally successful, he was not released from anxiety on this account till the year 11:8, when his nephew was killed in a skirmish, shortly after he had been created count of Flanders by the French monarch.

Eight years previously, Henry had received a terrible blow in the loss of his only son William. In 1120 the king, having concluded in Normandy a treaty of peace with the French king, set sail from Barfleur on his return, and was soon carried by a fair wind out of sight of land. His son William and his young companions, who were to follow in a vessel called the White Ship, wasted the time in feasting and revelry. On leaving the harbour, the ship was heedlessly carried on a rock, and immediately foundered. William, escaping in the long boat, had got clear of the ship, when, hearing the cries of his natural sister, Adela, countess of Perche, he ordered the seamen to put back in hopes of saving her; but the numbers who crowded in sunk the boat, and the prince, with all his retinue, perished. Above 140 young nobles, of the principal families of England and Normandy, were lost on this occasion. Bertold, a butcher of Rouen, who alone escaped to tell the tale, clung to the mast, and was taken up next morning by fishermen. Fitz-Stephen, the captain of the ship, who had also gained the mast, being informed by the butcher that prince William was lost, refused to survive the disaster, and perished in the sea. For three days Henry

entertained hopes that his son had escaped to some distant port of England; but when certain intelligence of the calamity was brought him he fainted away; and it was remarked that he never after was seen to smile, nor ever recovered his former cheerfulness.

§ 12. William left no children, and the king now turned his thoughts to Matilda, his only surviving child, whom, in 1110, he had betrothed, though only eight years of age, to the emperor Henry V., and had sent over to be educated in Germany. The king had lost his consort, "the good queen Maud," in 1118, and after the death of his son he was induced to marry, in 1121, Adelais, daughter of Godfrey, duke of Louvain, and niece of pope Calixtus II. As the emperor died without issue in 1125, Henry sent for his widowed daughter, and endeavoured to insure her succession by having her recognized as heir to all his dominions, and obliging the barons, both of Normandy and England, to swear fealty to her at Christmas, 1126. Two years later, motives of policy led him to give Matilda in marriage to Geoffrey the Handsome, son of his most formidable enemy, Fulk, count of Anjou. Geoffrey succeeded his father in 1129; and in 1131 Henry brought Matilda to England, and caused the nobles to renew their oath to her at Northampton. In 1133 she bore a son, at Le Mans, who was named Henry after his grandfather. During the latter years of his reign Henry resided chiefly in Normandy, where he died December 1, 1135, from a surfeit of lampreys, in the 67th year of his age, and the 35th of his reign. By his will he left Matilda heir of all his dominions, without making any mention of her husband Geoffrey, who had given him several causes of displeasure. His body was carried to England, and interred at Reading, in the abbey of St. Mary, which he had founded.

Henry, like his father, was a monarch of great ability, and possessed many qualities both of body and mind, natural and acquired, fitted for the high station to which he attained. His person was manly, his countenance engaging, his eyes clear, serene, and penetrating. From his early progress in letters he acquired the name of Beauclerc, or the Scholar; but his application to such sedentary pursuits abated nothing, in after life, of the activity and vigilance of his government. He carried the oppressions of the forest laws to an extreme, and, though he restrained the tyranny of his nobles, he set no limits to his own arbitrary and avaricious temper. He was susceptible of the sentiments as well of friendship as of resentment; but his conduct towards his brother and nephew showed that he was too disposed to sacrifice to his ambition all the dictates of justice and equity.

§ 13. STEPHEN, b. A.D. 1096, r. 1135-1154.- Adela, fourth daughter of William the Conqueror, had been married to Stephen, count of Blois, and had brought him several sons, among whom Henry and Stephen, the two now surviving, had been invited over to England by the late king. Henry was created bishop of Winchester, and Stephen was endowed with great estates. In 1107 the king married him to Matilda, daughter and heir of Eustace, count of Boulogne, who brought him, besides a feudal sovereignty in France, immense property in England. Stephen, in return, professed great attachment to his uncle, and had been among the first to take the oath for the succession of Matilda. But no sooner had Henry breathed his last, than, insensible to all the ties of gratitude and fidelity, he hastened over to England, and stopped not till he arrived in London, where he was hailed by the citizens as their deliverer, and immediately saluted king. This irregular election was confirmed by the nobles, who disliked Matilda and her Angevin marriage, and hoped for license under a sovereign who had a doubtful title and an easy temper. It was pretended that the late king on his deathbed had disinherited Matilda, and had expressed an intention of leaving Stephen heir to all his dominions. William, archbishop of Canterbury, with some misgivings, placed the crown upon Stephen's head on St. Stephen's Day (December 26).

To secure the favour of his subjects, and strengthen his tottering throne, Stephen granted a charter, and promised to maintain the immunities of the church, the laws and liberties of his subjects, and to observe the good customs of the Confessor. He invited over from the continent, particularly from Brittany and Flanders, great numbers of mercenary and disorderly soldiers, with whom every country in Europe at that time abounded; and he procured a bull from Rome, which ratified his title.

§ 14. Matilda and her husband, Geoffrey, were as unfortunate in Normandy as they had been in England. The Norman nobility, hearing that Stephen had obtained the English crown, put him in possession of their government. Even Robert, earl of Gloucester, natural son of the late king, who was much attached to the interests of his sister Matilda and zealous for the lineal succession, submitted to Stephen, and took the oath of fealty, but with an express condition that his rights and dignities should be preserved inviolate. In return for their submission, Stephen allowed many of the barons to fortify castles and put themselves in a posture of defence. As the king found himself totally unable to refuse these exorbitant demands, England was immediately filled with fortresses, which the nobles garrisoned either with their vassals, or with mercenary soldiers, who flocked to them from all quarters.

In 1138 David, king of Scotland, appeared at the head of an army in defence of his niece's title, and penetrated into Yorkshire, where his wild Galwegians and Highlanders committed the most barbarous ravages. Enraged by this cruelty, the northern clergy and nobility assembled an army, with which they encamped at Northallerton, and awaited the arrival of the enemy. A great battle was fought, called the battle of the Standard, from the consecrated banners of St. Cuthbert of Durham, St. Peter of York, St. John of Beverley, and St. Wilfrid of Ripon, which were erected by the English on a waggon, and carried along with the army as a military ensign. The king of Scots was defeated, and he himself, as well as his son Henry, narrowly escaped falling into the hands of the English (August 22, 1138).

§ 15. This success might have given some stability to Stephen's throne, had he not, with incredible imprudence, engaged in a controversy with the clergy. In imitation of the nobility, the bishops of Salisbury, Ely, and Lincoln had erected strong fortresses, and Stephen, who was now sensible from experience of the mischiefs attending these multiplied citadels, resolved to begin with destroying those of the clergy. Accordingly, he first seized the bishops of Salisbury and Lincoln, threw them into prison, and obliging them by menaces to deliver up the strongholds they had lately erected, he then turned his arms against the bishop of Ely. To the surprise of Stephen, the cause of the prelates was espoused by his own brother, Henry, bishop of Winchester, and papal legate. At a synod assembled at Winchester, complaints were made of the king's proceedings, and Stephen promised redress; but the empress Matilda, invited by this opportunity, and encouraged by the legate himself, had now landed in England, with Robert, earl of Gloucester (who had renounced his allegiance the year before), and a small retinue of knights (1139). She fixed her residence first at Arundel castle. The gates were opened to her by Adelais, her stepmother. Many barons declared for her, and open war broke out between the two parties. A frightful state of anarchy ensued. The castles of the nobility had become receptacles of licensed robbers, who, sallying forth day and night, committed spoil in the open country, the defenceless villages, and even the cities. They put their captives to torture, in order to make them reveal their treasures; sold their persons into slavery; and set fire to their houses after they had pillaged them of everything valuable. The land was left untilled; the instruments of husbandry were destroyed or abandoned; and a grievous famine, the natural result of those disorders, affected equally both parties, and reduced the spoilers and their victims to the extremity of indigence and hunger.

The unexpected capture of Stephen himself by the earl of Gloucester, at Lincoln, seemed to promise an end to these calamities. He was conducted to Gloucester, and, though at first treated with humanity, was soon after loaded with irons, and imprisoned at Bristol (1141). The claims of Matilda were solemnly recognized in a synod held at Winchester by Stephen's brother, the legate. The Londoners, who clamoured in vain for Stephen's release, were obliged to submit; and Matilda's authority, by the prudence of earl Robert, seemed to be established over the whole kingdom. But besides the disadvantage of her sex, which weakened her influence over a turbulent and martial people, Matilda was of a passionate, imperious spirit, and knew not how to temper with affability the harshness of a refusal. Stephen's queen, seconded by many of the nobility, and by the citizens of London, petitioned for the liberty of her husband, and undertook that on this condition he should renounce the crown and retire into a convent. The offended legate, who desired that his nephew Eustace might inherit Boulogne and the other patrimonial estates of his father, retired to Winchester in disgust, and sided with Stephen's partisans. The Londoners were alienated by a heavy fine imposed upon them for the support they had given to Stephen. To check the designs of the legate, he was besieged by the empress at Winchester. The bishop held his palace and Maud the castle; and the burning of that ancient capital put an end to its rivalry with London. At length the legate, having joined his force to that of the Londoners, besieged Matilda. Hard pressed by famine, she made her escape; but in the flight earl Robert, her brother, while covering her retreat, fell into the hands of the enemy. This nobleman was as much the life and soul of one party, as Stephen was of the other; and Matilda, sensible of his merit and importance, consented to exchange prisoners on equal terms (Nov. 1, 1141). Next year the civil war was again kindled with greater fury than ever. Matilda retired to Oxford, was besieged by the legate, and escaped through the snow to Walsingford, scantily attended (Dec. 20). The war continued to rage for three years longer with variable success; the empress holding the west of England, and Stephen the east and London, the barons being too disaffected towards both to bring the contest to a decision. Earl Robert died in 1145, and the empress retired into Normandy (1146).

§ 16. In 1149 Matilda's son, Henry of Anjou, proceeded into Scotland, from which place he made various incursions into England, but with little success. By his dexterity and vigour, his valour in war, and his prudent conduct, he roused the hopes of his party, and gave indications of those great qualities which he afterwards dis