Stephen. IV.-STEPHEN. AND Stephen was a goodly man, and a man of great valour; howbeit, as he was not the rightful heir, he bethought himself how he might best obtain the affections of the people; and he sought by all manner of ways to please them. To the nobles he gave leave to build them forts and castles on their own lands; he won favour with the priests by exempting them from temporal authority; the gentry he pleased with leave to hunt in his forests; and he pleased the people with freeing them from taxes and impositions. How And Stephen was a goodly man-howbeit as he was not the rightful heir.] He was an active and affable prince, possessing considerable abilities, though not endowed with a sound judgment; and, still more to his credit, his reign, notwithstanding the dangers with which he was continually surrounded, was not tarnished with any of those shocking acts of cruelty and revenge so frequent among princes of this age. beit, he was not the rightful heir. Henry left his only legitimate daughter, Matilda, heiress of all his dominions, and her party was espoused by her brother the Duke of Gloucester, a brave, powerful, and honourable prince. Stephen was grandson to William the Conqueror. His father, Count of Blois, had married Adela, the daughter of that monarch, by whom he had Stephen and several other children For some time Stephen had resided in England, where he exerted every artifice to ingratiate himself with the nobility, clergy, and people. No sooner had Henry breathed his last, than he began to adopt measures to obtain possession of the vacant throne. The citizens of Dover, and those of Canterbury, apprized of his purpose, shut their gates against him; but, hastening to London, the populace, stimulated by his emissaries, as well as moved by his general popularity, immediately salt ted him King. His next object was to obtain the good-will of the clergy, and prevail upon them to perform the ceremony of coronation. His brother, the bishop of Winchester, was of great use to him in this capital point: in conjunction with the bishop of Satisbury, he applied to William, archbishop of Canterbury, and requested him to give the royal unction to Stephen. The primate, having sworn fealty to Matilda, at first refused; but his scruples were at length surmounted by a dishonourable expedient. Hugh Bigod, steward of the household, made oath before the archbishop, that the late King on his death-bed had shown a dissatisfaction with his daughter Matilda, and had expressed his intention of leaving the Count of Boulogne heir to all his dominions. The primate, either believing or feigning to believe Bigod's testimony, anointed Stephen, and put the crown upon his head Thus, by the help of a little unction and a false oath, was the rightful heir set aside and an usurper put in possession of sovereign authority. To the nobles he gave leave to build them forts.] It was in this reign those numerous castles were built, the ruins of which are still to be found in various parts of England. To secure his tottering throne, Stephen made many impolitic grants to the clergy and nobility, equally destructive to his own authority and the public peace. The clergy, who in those days could hardly be considered subjects of the crown, only bound themselves to observe their oaths of allegiance as long as they were protected in their ecclesiastical usurpations. The barons, in return for their submission, required, the Stephen. Nevertheless his reign was full of trouble; the word was not sheathed, neither ceased he from war all the days of his life. And now the sin of laziness began to prevail in the land, and the great men and the nobles made unto themselves coaches and chariots, right of fortifying their castles, and putting themselves in a posture of defence. All England was immediately filled with these fortresses, which the noblemen garrisoned either with their vassals, or with licentious soldiers who flocked to them from all quarters. Unbounded rapine was exercised upon the people for the maintenance of the troops; and private animosities, which had with difficulty been restrained by law, now breaking out without controul, rendered England a scene of uninterrupted violence and devastation. Wars between the nobles were carried on with the utmost fury in every quarter; the barons even assumed the right of coming money, and of exercising, without appeal, any act of jurisdiction; and the inferior gentry, as well as the people, finding no defence from the laws during this total dissolution of the sovereign authority, were obliged, for their immediate safety, to pay court to some neighbouring chieftain, and to purchase his protection, both by submitting to his exactions, and assisting him in his rapine upon others. Such was the precious government of priests and aristocrats. "The aristocratical power," says Hume, "which is usually so oppressive in the feudal governments, had now risen to its utmost height during the reign of a prince, who, though endowed with vigour and abilities, had usurped the throne without the pretence of a title, and who was necessitated to tolerate in others the same violence to which he himself had been beholden for his sovereignty," Nevertheless his reign was full of trouble.] Indeed it was: it was the most turbulent period in English history. A re-action took place in favour of Matilda; Stephen was taken prisoner, and laid in irons at Bristol. Matilda was crowned, but her prosperity was of short duration. Not keeping on good terms with the clergy, her rival was soon reinstated in his authority; and she was obliged to take refuge in Oxford, where she hoped to remain till succours arrived from Normandy. Stephen laid close siege to the place, and the Queen afraid of falling into his hands, took advantage of a dark night and made her escape, accompanied with only four attendants, who, like herself, the better to elude the sentinels, the ground being covered with snow, clothed themselves in white. She passed the Thames on the ice, and walked above six miles on foot, with the snow beating in her face all the way in spite of these difficulties she came to Abingdon, and rode the same night to Wallingford.-During these conflicts, the condition of the people was deplorable in the extreme: no security, either for their property or persons. The woods were filled with ferocions banditti; and such were the dangers to which the inhabitants were continually exposed, that every night, when they closed their doors and windows, it was customary to put up a short prayer against theives and robbers. "The castles of the nobility," (says the prince of historians) were become receptacles of licensed robbers, who sallying forth day and night, committed spoil on the open country, on the villages, and even on the cities; put the captives to torture, in order to make them reveal their treasures; sold their persons to slavery; and set fire to their houses after they had pillaged them of every thing valuable. The fierceness of their disposition leading them to commit wanton destruction, frustrated their rapacity of its purpose; and the persons and property even of the ecclesiastics, generally so much revered, were, at last, from necessity, exposed to the same outrage which had laid waste the kingdom. The land was kept untilled; the instruments of husbandry were destroyed or abandoned; and a grievous famine, the natural result of these disorders, affected equally both parties, and reduced the spoilers, as well as the defenceless people, to the most extreme want and indigence."-Hist. yol. i. p. 360. 66 Now the sin of laziness began to prevail] In consequence, we suppose, of the great exertion and excitement of the preceding bloody and turbulent period. Stephen. and were drawn through the streets of the city with horses; moreover, their pride increased daily, insomuch that in process of time they were carried on the shoulders of men, and blushed not. And Stephen reigned over England eighteen years and nine months, and he died; and Henry Plantagenet reigned in his stead. And Stephen reigned over England-and he died] Of the cholic and piles at Canterbury, where he had come to have an interview with the Earl of Flanders. He was buried by the side of his queen, and son Eustace, in the Abbey of Feversham, which he had founded. His body lay there till the suppression of the monasteries, when for the sake of the leaden coffin, wherein it was enclosed, it was taken up and thrown into the next water. APPLICATION. Rapin says, If the King's character be considered in general only, he may be said to be worthy to live in better times, and his good qualities to outweigh his defects.” The chief criminals of the age were the clergy and the barons. Having already given some account of these classes, it may not be amiss to give a short account of the general customs and manners of this barbarous age. Royalty, of course, commands the first attention. We have already spoken of the mode in which the revenue was colJected. The court, in its perambulation through the country, exhibited the appearance of a modern puppet-show, and its attendants were of that description which is usually congregated at Bartholomew or Mile-end fairs. Peter of Blois, who lived in those days, gives a curious description of the manner in which the monarch was attended in his morning walk. "When," says he, "the King sets out in the morning, you see multitudes of people running up and down as if they were distracted; horses rushing against horses; carriages overturning carriages; players, whores, gamesters, confectioners, mimics, tailors, barbers, pimps, and parasites, making so much no se and, in a word, such an intolerable tumult of horse and foot, that you imagine ithe great abyss hath opened, and that hell hath poured out all her inhabitants." Stews were established by law in London, and most probably in the chief towns of the kingdom. Ladies of pleasure followed the camp and court in immense numbers; they were formed into regular corporations, and put under the government of officers, who were termed marshals of the whores. Their office was hereditary; to which estates and considerable emoluments were attached. Long hair was very much worn, and was a great eye-sore to the clergy, who did not like the contrast of their shaven crowns, with the flowing ringlets of the knights and barons. It is related, that Bishop Serlo, in a sermon before Henry I. declaimed so powerfully against the uselessness of long hair, that he prevailed on the King to have his locks shortened; and the worthy prelate, fearing a relapse, drew out a pair of shears on the spot, and immediately began to operate on the monarch and his courtiers. Nevertheless, the curls were invincible for a long time; and were never finally subdued, till a knight dreamt he was strangled in his hair this was considered a bad omen, and they were immediately discarded. Formerly the English wore the hair on the upper lip; but not being the fashion of the Normans, the Conqueror compelled them to shave that part as well as the chin. The dress of the people was a cap or bonnet for the head; shirts, doublets, or mantles, for the trunk of the body; breeches, hose, and shoes, for the lower parts. The dress of the women was similar to the men; only they wore their under garments more loose and flowing; to their mantle they usually annexed a hood. The great dandy of those days was the famous Thomas à Becket. Fitz-Stephen, in his life, as a proof of his elegant way of living, gives the following curious account of the superb manner he *Henry's History, vol..vi. p. 248. Henry the Second. entertained his guests. "He commanded," says he, "his servants to cover the floor of his dining-room with clean straw or hay, every morning in winter, and with fresh bulrushes, or green branches, for every day in summer, that such of the knights who came to dine with him as could not find room on the benches, might sit down and dine comfortably on the floor, without spoiling their fine clothes." There were only two meals a day in those times, dinner and supper; the former at nine in the morning, and the latter at five in the afternoon. The following triplet used to be either sung or said: To rise at five, to dine at nine; To sup at five, to bed at nine; The monks, however, fared better, some of them, as those of St. Swithin, had thi teen meals a day. The composition of many ancient dishes has been entirely lost: for instance, dellegrout, monypigranum, karampie, and several others. Common people used bread made of rye, barley, or oats. His Majesty, however, and the monks, had their bread and wassal cakes made of the finest flour. Cyder, perry, ale, claret, and hypocras-wine mixed with honey, was the general drink of this period. The English, in those days, were greatly addicted to gormandizing and drinking. The Anglo-Nor mans were a more sober and abstemious people. They were more fond of ostentation and display, and expended their incomes in the magnificence of their tables, the splen dour of their palaces, and the maintenance of a numerous retinue of domestics. Their passion for the fair sex, however, could hardly be restrained; and there are many instances of ladies of the first rank, distinguished for their beauty, being under the necessity of retiring to a nunnery to avoid their lawless attacks. In the dissolute reign of William Rufus, William of Malmsbury says, that they showed themselves men in nothing so much as in their daily attacks upon the chastity of women. V.-HENRY II. AND Henry was twenty and two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned over England four and thirty years and eight months; and his mother's name was Maud. And he chose unto himself wise and discreet counsellors of state, he appointed learned and able men to reform abuses in the laws, And Henry was twenty and two years old-his mother's name was Maud.] And his wife's name was Eleanor. He was the greatest prince of his time for wisdom, virtue, and abilities, and the most powerful in extent of dominion of all those that had ever filled the throne of England. His wife Eleanor, the daughter and heiress of William, Duke of Guienne, had been married sixteen years to Louis VIL King of France, and had attended him in a crusade which that monarch conducted against the infidels; but having there lost the affections of her husband, from some suspicion of gallantry with a handsome Saracen, Louis, more delicate than polite, procured a divorce from her,. and returned to her the provinces which by her marriage she had annexed to the. crown of France. Henry, neither discouraged by the inequality of years, nor by the reports of Eleanor's gallantries, offered her his hand, and espousing her six weeks after her divorce, got possession of all her dominions as her dowry. The great power and fame Henry acquired by this bold step, first paved the way for his advancement to the throne. Henry the Second.. he disbanded also the foreign army which his father had kept, and utterly destoyed the castles and forts which the nobles and prelates had built in his reign. And it came to pass, that grievous complaints were made unto the king of divers cruel offences and enormous crimes committed by the clergy, occasioned by their being exempted in the former reign from the civil power, and encouraged, as was said, by the connivance of Becket the high priest. And the king assembled the priests and the elders together, and he And it came to pass, that grievous complaints-of divers cruel offences and crimes committed by the clergy.] The ecclesiastics had renounced all subordination to the magistrate they openly pretended an exemption in criminal accusations from a trial before courts of justice; and were gradually introducing a like exemption in civil causes : spiritual punishments could alone be inflicted on their offences; and as the clergy had greatly multiplied, and many of them of the most abandoned character, crimes of the deepest dye, murders, rapes, robberies, adulteries, were daily committed with impunity by the ecclesiastics. No fewer than 100 murders had been perpetrated in the short period since Henry's accession, by men of that profession, who had never been called to account for these crimes; and holy orders were become a full protection for all enormities.* A clerk in Worcestershire, having debauched a farmer's daughter, and murdered the father, the King insisted he should be given up to the civil power, and receive the punishment due to the enormity of his crime. Becket insisted on the privileges of the church; confined the murderer in the bishop's prison, lest he should be seized by the King's officers; and maintained that no greater punishment should be inflicted on him than degradation. When the King demanded that after he was degraded he should be tried by the civil authority, the primate asserted that it was iniquitous to try a man twice for the same offence. Among other inventions resorted to by the clergy to obtain money, they inculcated the necessity of penance as an atonement for sin; and having introduced the practice of receiving money for the granting of those penances, the sins of the people yielded them an enormous revenue; and the King computed that by this invention alone, they levied more money upon his subjects than flowed by all the taxes into the exchequer. That some limit might be put to their exactions, Henry appointed an officer to preside in the ecclesiastical courts, whose business it was to tax the charges they imposed on their deluded votaries for the remission of their sins. And the King assembled the priests and elders together.] Henry was determined to put some bounds to the licentiousness, abominable crimes, and usurpation of the ecclesiastical power. When he had assembled the prelates together, he put to them this decisive question-Whether or not they were willing to submit to the ancient laws and customs of the kingdom? The bishops unanimously replied, they were willing, saving their own order. Enraged at this base subterfuge, the King instantly left the assembly; but by no means abandoned his project of humbling the church. Having first gained over the barons to his design, he summoned a general council of the nobility and clergy at Clarendon. The bishops, finding there was a general combination against them, thought it prudent to submit ; and the laws, known by the name of the Constitutions of Clarendon, were voted without opposition. * Hume, p. 391. Salvo in omnibus ordine suo, et honore Dei, et sanctæ ecclesia, as the knaves said. |