THE EARL (A HAMMER FOR PRINCES)

BOOKS BY CECELIA HOLLAND

The Serpent Dreamer

The Witches’ Kitchen

The Soul Thief

The Angel and the Sword

Lily Nevada

An Ordinary Woman

Railroad Schemes

Valley of the Kings

Jerusalem

Pacific Street

The Bear Flag

The Lords of Vaumartin

Pillar of the Sky

The Belt of Gold

The Sea Beggars

Home Ground

City of
God

Two Ravens

Floating Worlds

Great Maria

The Death of Attila

The Earl

Antichrist

Until the
Sun
Falls

The Kings in Winter

Rakóssy

The Firedrake

FOR CHILDREN

The King’s Road

Ghost on the Steppe

website: www.thefiredrake.com

THE EARL

A HAMMER FOR PRINCES
)

 
A Novel of the Anarchy

      by Cecelia Holland

Copyright © 1971 by Cecelia Holland

All rights reserved

Library of Congress catalog number 78-154913

ISBN 978-1460925904

This edition copyright © 2011 by Cecelia Holland

INTRODUCTION

In 1120, the only legitimate son of King Henry I of
England
drowned in the wreck of the White Ship. The King married again, but as it became evident that this union would not produce another heir, Henry’s attention turned toward his remaining legitimate child, his daughter Matilda (or Maud), who because of her marriage to the German Emperor Henry V is called the Empress.

Her husband the emperor having died in 1125, Matilda (or Maud) made her way back to
England
. In 1127, her father forced his tenants-in-chief in both England and Normandy (which he had taken from his brother Robert Curthose--"Little Britches"--in 1106) to swear homage to Matilda as his heiress and successor.

The barons were not happy. They demanded the right to counsel and consent when the king married off his daughter a second time. No one doubted that he would; the nature of the Anglo-Norman kingship required a king, not a queen.

Henry was an unscrupulous, crabby, suspicious man. The husband he chose for the heiress of
England
and
Normandy
was the son of the Count of Anjou, traditionally
Normandy
’s enemy and rival. The wisdom of this choice was not immediately apparent, especially to the Norman barons, and foreseeing this, the king arranged the marriage in secret so that they would have no chance to object. In 1128 Matilda married Geoffrey, heir to
Anjou
.

The barons were furious, and the bride and groom disliked each other, but in 1133 Henry was presented with his first lawful grandson, who was named for him. The king, now in his sixties, hastened to extract another oath from his barons, securing the succession firmly on Matilda and her heirs.  

Late in the following year, Henry I ate a dish of lampreys, always chancy in those times, and died of acute indigestion.

None of the possible heirs was in
England
. Matilda was in
Anjou
. Her obvious rivals, the grandsons of William the Conqueror, were in
Normandy
. Her half brother, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, was a bastard, but William the Conqueror had been a bastard, and
Gloucester
was able and respected. Her cousins, the sons of the Conqueror’s daughter Adela and Stephen of Blois, were wealthy, powerful, admired men. In fact, the eldest of them, Theobald, Count of Blois, was the choice of the Norman barons to become their duke.

Theobald’s younger brother Stephen was quicker or, more likely, had been planning longer. He raced across the Channel to
London
, where the people acclaimed him king, and sped on to
Winchester
. Another brother, Henry, was, happily, Bishop of Winchester, and he was waiting there, with the head of Henry I’s administration and the keeper of Henry I’s treasury, to greet Stephen and give him the old king’s money and seals and their own support.

Stephen had, of course, sworn the oath to Matilda, twice, and so had the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose duty it was to anoint
England
’s king. Who should now conveniently appear but Hugh Bigod, a baron who had attended the king on his deathbed, and who swore that Henry with his dying breath had repudiated his daughter and named Stephen as his heir. Freed of the oath, the archbishop anointed Stephen king of
England
.

When the news reached
Normandy
, Theobald reluctantly gave up the duchy to his brother. The entire operation had taken only three weeks from the death of the old king.

At first, the other barons accepted Stephen. His personal holdings, in
England
and in
Normandy
, were extensive, he was rich, he was a courageous and chivalrous knight, and he was extravagantly generous. Even the old king's bastard
Gloucester
, after some hesitation, did Stephen homage. Robert Beaumont, Earl of Leicester, and Waleran of Meulan, the twin brothers who were heads of the great House of Beaumont, became Stephen’s chief advisers. Matilda appealed to the Roman Curia for justice, but she was only a woman, and nobody was inclined to help her.

Stephen’s most splendid moment, however, was the coup that made him king. Before long, he had managed to alienate his brother the Bishop of Winchester, who was passed over in the election of a new Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Earl of Chester, whose interests Stephen ignored in a settlement with the king of Scots. Finally, in 1139, Stephen made the error of attacking the Bishop of Salisbury and the bishop’s son and nephews—the Bishops of Lincoln and Ely.

This action lost him the support of the Church. Robert of Gloucester took the opportunity to make his formal defiance and revolt against the Crown. The empress landed in
England
to raise the banners of her cause, and immediately a half dozen other, smaller rebellions broke out.

The pattern for the next fourteen years was quickly set. The empress’s center of support was in the west, with her base at
Bristol
. She had her supporters and their armies and the occasional help of her husband, the Count of Anjou, who was spending most of his attention and men on the conquest of
Normandy
. King Stephen controlled
London
and the east. Along with his feudal levy (under the circumstances not very reliable), he had an army of Flemish mercenaries.

The heaviest fighting took place in the
Midlands
, along the frontier between the two centers of power. Neither side was strong enough to defeat the other. In their attempts to gain the decisive edge, both the king and the empress rewarded their supporters with lavish grants of power and authority. In 1135, there were seven earls in
England
. In the eighteen years he was king, Stephen created nineteen more, and the empress appointed eight.

This generosity allowed certain of the barons to fatten at the expense of both rivals. The civil war itself masked the existence of many smaller conflicts fought between baron and baron or baron and people, and in their endless pursuit of each other, the two royals rivals lost their control over local authority and jurisdictions. Therefore, a man like  Rannulf, Earl of Chester, would put together a great mass of land—gifts from both king and empress, as well as his family’s holdings—and rule it like a little kingdom.

In recent years it has become fashionable to make light of the Anarchy, and indeed the reports of some of the chroniclers reflect extreme local conditions rather than the condition of the whole kingdom. Yet in some areas the authority of the Crown was forgotten, and order kept by the personal power of local men, or by mere inertia—or order disappeared altogether.

In 1141, the rebellion of the Earl of Chester against King Stephen led to the confrontation at
Lincoln
, where the king, a model of chivalry if not common sense, surrendered the advantage of the terrain so that the battle would start on even terms. He was chivalrously beaten and taken prisoner. At first he was treated well, but soon he was seen bound in chains.

The empress entered
London
in triumph. Before she was even crowned, her arrogance, plus the fondness of the City of
London
(whose burgesses were barons) for the king, sent her scurrying for the safety of
Winchester
. Stephen’s queen, who for the sake of confusion was also named Matilda, led the pursuit with the mercenary army.

They drove the Empress and her friends out of
Winchester
, and the retreat became a headlong flight. The empress narrowly escaped, and her brother
Gloucester
was captured.

Exchanged for the king, he left his sister in
Oxford
and he went to
Anjou
to ask the help of her husband. The count was conquering
Normandy
and pressed
Gloucester
into service there. When he finally got back to
England
, he found the situation desperate. Stephen had attacked the Empress in
Oxford
and seized the city and besieged her in the castle. Before
Gloucester
could rescue her, she escaped in the middle of the night and ran through the ice and winter snow to
Wallingford
.

Gloucester
quickly defeated the rampaging king, who in his turn barely avoided capture, and brought the west of
England
somewhat under his control again.
England
lapsed into an unaccustomed calm. A number of the more warlike barons went on Crusade in 1146, draining off some of the fighting zeal, and the country was exhausted. Even when the empress’s fourteen year-old son, Henry, came to
England
, general enthusiasm could not be mustered. Henry, who had brought along some mercenaries, soon found himself without the money to pay them. He appealed to his cousin Stephen for help, and the king paid off the rioting troops and sent the boy home.

In 1148,
Gloucester
died and the Empress left
England
for
Anjou
. She never returned. King Stephen was left with the problem of bringing under control a number of men and communities that had been ignoring him for years. The great earls were building castles without his permission, making treaties between themselves, fighting private wars and in some cases minting money, all without any regard for the rights and prerogatives of the Crown. The ordinary business of the kingdom—collecting taxes, holding courts of justice—had all but ceased. Through the generosity and ineptitude of the two rivals, some of his own supporters had become a match for the king. Certain towns defied him as well.