Authors: Lisa Hilton
The following August, Matilda was once more employed as her husband’s diplomatic representative at a putative peace conference in Bath. She and Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury represented the royalist party, while Robert of Gloucester spoke for the Empress. Bishop Henry of Winchester, King Stephen’s younger brother, then took the proposals to King Louis, who was now concerned for the future of his sister as well as his own rights as the overlord of Normandy. Stephen himself found
them too disadvantageous and rejected them. His unwillingness to come to terms exacerbated the unrest in England, but it was not until the siege of Lincoln the following year that the Empress decisively gained the upper hand.
Stephen’s actions between August 1139 and February 1141 have been criticised for incoherence, but though it may at first appear that he rushed about the country desperately fighting fires, his policy of ‘administrative’ earldoms theoretically left him free to lend his presence where it was most urgently required. When Ranulf, Earl of Chester seized the castle of Lincoln just before Christmas 1140, Stephen’s response was to try to create a similar role for him. In return for the settlement of a land claim in the region, the earl and his brother were left in charge of the castle. But Stephen did not trust Ranulf and a month later he reneged on his promise. No chronicler offers a precise reason for his change of heart, but John of Hexham gives an account of a quarrel between Ranulf and Henry of Scotland over disputed rights in Carlisle and Cumberland. According to this story, Queen Matilda, advised that Ranulf was planning to kidnap Henry, arranged for him to travel safely back to Scotland with a strong bodyguard. There is little more to this version of events than rumour, though it is notable that it acknowledged the significance of the Queen’s intervention. However, it does hint at an awareness that Ranulf was generally belligerent. His ambitions in Lincolnshire were highly threatening to other magnates, and Stephen may have retracted the concessions he had granted him after a hostile reaction from other lords at his Christmas court.
The battle for Lincoln was one of the most decisive events of the civil war. Orderic Vitalis notes that two women were closely involved in the original seizure of the castle by the Earl of Chester. The countesses of Chester and Lincoln, Matilda and Hawise, distracted the castellan’s wife while Ranulf entered the castle as though he planned to do no more than collect his wife from her visit. A small detail, but one that illustrates how even women not possessed of queenly authority were able to do more to support their husbands’ strategies than standing by as anxious spectators. Stephen attacked Lincoln Castle on Candlemas,
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February. It was considered an inauspicious day for a battle, as the feast marks the change in the Church calendar from the celebrations of the Nativity to the anticipation of the sorrows and privations of Lent. In the procession to morning Mass before the King rode out on his raid, Stephen dropped his candle and it broke. Such an interruption in the carefully choreographed liturgy was seen as another bad omen, but Stephen was determined. He made a good
show in the mêlée, fighting with first his axe and then his sword, but he was ignominiously laid low by a well-aimed rock (so much for the glamour of chivalry), and taken prisoner.
Stephen was removed to Gloucester, where he met his cousin the Empress a week later, and then detained at Earl Robert’s fortress at Bristol. Matilda of Boulogne was campaigning in the south. She was in London in April, which suggests she had turned back in an attempt to hold the capital. There the Queen ‘made supplication to all, importuned with prayer, promises and fair words for the deliverance of her husband’.
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The Empress held an Easter court at Oxford, then progressed to Winchester, where she received a royalist delegation from London which included Matilda’s clerk, Christian. The Londoners petitioned for the King’s release, but the Empress slyly insisted that he was not a prisoner — how could a king be held prisoner by his own vassals? Matilda countered this by claiming that the archbishop of Canterbury would never accept the Empress without the specific permission of the King. Yet Stephen’s liegemen were turning to the Empress in increasing numbers. Crucial defectors were Earl Geoffrey de Mandeville, Hugh Bigod of Essex and Aubrey de Vere, the future Earl of Oxford. Mandeville’s declaration for the Empress, in return for which he was granted substantial concessions and rewards, particularly affected the Queen, as he held custody of the Tower of London, which Matilda was forced to quit in mid-May. Her new daughter-in-law Constance, though, was obliged to stay behind. Matilda retreated to Kent, which was safer and well positioned for communication with her county of Boulogne.
After a second conference with a party from London in June at St Albans, the Empress proceeded to Westminster. Initially, the citizens had been reluctant to receive her, as Matilda of Boulogne’s forces, under her Flemish captain William of Ypres, were laying waste to the land on the Surrey shore, but De Mandeville’s change of sides, and thus the possession of the Tower, smoothed the Empress’s path and she began to make plans for a crown-wearing ceremony at Westminster. It was at this point that she adopted the title of ‘Lady of the English’. The
Gesta Stephani
, however, considered her behaviour at Westminster far from ladylike. The crown appeared to be within reach, but it was her
conduct
that allowed it to slip from her grasp. To the Londoners, her behaviour seemed discourteous and stubborn, even downright pig-headed. She demanded large sums of money from the city and insulted its representatives when they turned her down. On her arrival at the palace, she had received petitioners, as was customary for a ruler, including envoys from Matilda of Boulogne who
requested that Eustace be allowed to inherit King Stephen’s Continental holdings if he were not to become king. Failing to appreciate that a show of clemency and ‘feminine’ pacifism would win her vital support, the Empress refused outright. By 24 June, the Londoners had had enough of her, and decided to declare their loyalty to Queen Matilda. The city bells were rung as a signal to the people to storm the palace, and the Empress and her entourage made such a hasty escape that they were obliged to abandon their dinner.
At first King Stephen’s brother Bishop Henry had been prepared to come to an accommodation with the Empress, but the Westminster debacle was so distasteful to him that he withdrew his support. It was rumoured that the Empress was planning to make an illegal gift of the county of Boulogne to one of her champions, and the Bishop met with Matilda to reassure her, promising to work for the King’s freedom. To recover from the embarrassment of London and to stage a show of strength, the Empress held a court at Oxford, moving on in August to Winchester, where Bishop Henry had immured himself in Wolvesey Palace. Matilda rushed to her brother-in-law’s defence, arriving on 12 August to besiege the besiegers. Her supporters were now swelled by the earls of Essex and Pembroke, who had returned to the royalist camp, bringing a contingent of Essex and Suffolk barons with them, and after two days the Empress and Robert of Gloucester were hounded out of the city, the Empress riding astride her horse like a man for greater speed. She managed to reach Devizes, but Earl Robert, fighting in her rearguard, was taken by the Earl of Warenne.
Matilda of Boulogne now had a vital hostage of her own and the rival campaigns had reached a stalemate. Once again, women took the diplomatic lead. Matilda communicated with Robert’s wife Mabel, Countess of Gloucester, through messengers to negotiate an exchange of prisoners. Mabel, anxious for her husband’s safety, proposed easy terms for his return, while Matilda suggested that if Stephen were released, Earl Robert could be appointed royal justiciar. William of Malmesbury saw this as an attempt to bribe Robert into changing sides, but the Earl himself rejected both plans, his wife’s because it was motivated by her ‘too eager affection’, according to Malmesbury, and the Queen’s because his sister would never countenance it. Nevertheless, Matilda and Countess Mabel were able to come to an agreement about the fates of the two most powerful men in the country without their conduct being portrayed as arrogant or excessively ambitious. ‘It is striking that there is no disparaging comment, only recognition of their actions as peacemakers and indeed
power brokers, involved in careful diplomacy.’
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They finally brokered a complex deal in which Matilda and her younger son William went to Bristol, remaining with Mabel as hostages for Stephen. Meanwhile, the King was liberated to travel to Winchester, where he freed Earl Robert. Robert then returned to Bristol to release the Queen, leaving
his
son William at Winchester with the King, who freed him when his own wife and child were released. During this exchange, Stephen and Gloucester had time for a polite, rather sportsmanlike chat, agreeing that neither should take the situation personally.
Support for the Empress among the barons now began to decline. A general proposition for their disenchantment has been termed ‘neutralism’, meaning that the self-interest of the magnates was no longer felt to be secure with the Empress and that they thought it wiser simply to withdraw. They had not come to her side out of chivalry, and they were not gallant now ‘Matilda had shown at the height of her power that she had neither the political judgement nor the understanding of men to enable her to act wisely in a crisis.’
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The Empress was also dealing with a cunning politician in Matilda of Boulogne. To recover the loyalty of Geoffrey de Mandeville, Matilda granted him a charter at Canterbury, promising that he could retain the advantages bestowed on him by the Empress if he returned to the King’s side. Although Queen Matilda was an experienced diplomat who had commanded military campaigns, she was always careful to present herself as a supplicant: a mother seeking justice for her son, a loving wife concerned for her husband. She was conciliatory where the Empress was harsh, and she knew that a display of apparent weakness could count as a strength. As she sat beside him in her gold crown at their Christmas court at Canterbury, Stephen had every reason to be grateful for the intelligence and fortitude of his wife.
The King relied even more heavily on Matilda early in the next year, 1142. Although the Empress’s hopes had received a serious setback, the uprisings continued. Stephen and Matilda made a progress to York, where they were reconciled with Ranulf of Chester, but the King was ill throughout much of the spring and summer, suffering from lassitude and depression. A great army was mustered at York and then had to be sent home again because the King was too listless to determine how they should advance. Faced with her husband’s debilitation, Matilda became more active than ever. She travelled alone across the Channel and on 23 June held a court at Lens, in her county of Boulogne, in an attempt to raise funds and men. By the autumn, Stephen had recovered sufficiently to besiege Oxford, where the Empress was staying. He was no longer in a
position to be gentlemanly, as he had been at Arundel three years before. The siege continued until December but the Empress made yet another escape, creeping out of the wintry city in a white cloak, invisible against the snow, and making her way to Abingdon accompanied by just a handful of knights. The Empress Matilda may have had unappealing manners, but she was gloriously brave.
From 1141 to 1147, Matilda of Boulogne based herself mainly in London. Her presence was important in retaining the loyalty of the city, and she was conveniently close to Dover to ensure that the crucial communications between Dover and Wissant remained accessible. During this period, 56 per cent of Matilda’s attested and independent charters were made within forty miles of London and none more than eighty miles away. While Stephen trailed from siege to siege, Matilda supervised government business, and it has been judged probable that she was also responsible for the collection of revenues at the Westminster exchequer.
Oxford had surrendered after the Empress’s escape, but still the war dragged on. The next summer Stephen was defeated at Wilton by Earl Robert, who now controlled the territory to the west of Winchester. In Normandy, the King’s imprisonment after Lincoln had prompted the magnates to seek terms with the Empress’s husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, who was still pushing her cause along the duchy’s borders. Geoffrey campaigned stolidly in Normandy every year, and in 1144 he took Rouen and had himself invested as duke in April. The loss of Normandy was a bitter blow, and the only comfort Stephen could take from it was that gradually, the barons on both sides were losing interest in the fight for England.
Historians have suggested two dates, 1148 and 1150, as the beginning of the ‘magnates’ peace’, but Earl Robert’s death in October 1147 lends support to the earlier year, as his demise marked the collapse of even nominal party adherence. One by one, the lords simply gave up fighting. The Empress lingered on for four months with her small garrison at Devizes, where she had fled after her escape from Oxford, but early in 1148 she was back in Normandy. So irrelevant had she become by now that only one source mentions her departure. Gervase of Canterbury’s clerk reported approvingly that she had returned, a humbled wife, ‘to the haven of her husband’s protection’.
The careers of Matilda of Boulogne and the Empress Matilda had mirrored each other in many ways. Both women now chose to retreat from active politics and, following the example of their mothers, Matilda and Mary of Scotland, in the tradition of pious female royalty, they elected
to live apart from their husbands and to embrace religious seclusion. The Empress opted for the priory of Nôtre-Dame-du-Pré, outside Rouen, for her retirement; after 1147 Matilda of Boulogne lived mainly in Canterbury at the monastery of St Augustine. It seems that Matilda had long felt the call of the contemplative life. As early as 1141, during the negotiations for Stephen’s release, she had proposed an unusual solution: that Stephen might emulate her own father and retire to a monastery, in which case she could have decided to do likewise. Alternatively, Matilda suggested, the King could live as a sort of permanent pilgrim in the Holy Land, where she could have accompanied him. Her interest in crusading and the Templars made this an attractive idea, though it was never pursued, and Matilda settled for a less adventurous manner of drawing closer to God.