The Great Turning Points of British History (5 page)

1068
William faces opposition
. Opposition to King William’s regime, its taxes and his patronage of foreigners was growing and he found it necessary to besiege Exeter, where Harold’s mother was lodged.

Edgar the Ætheling took refuge in Scotland, where his sister Margaret was forced into marriage by King Malcolm. William appointed Robert of Commines as earl of Northumbria but he was overwhelmed at Durham on 28 January 1069, leading to a general rising of the north.

1072
Scotland acknowledges King William
. Having suppressed the northern rising (1069–70) and a revolt in the Fens (1071), William led a large force into Scotland. Malcolm III had given support to William’s enemies and had allied himself with Edgar the Ætheling but could not withstand a full-blown Norman invasion. A meeting took place between the two kings, at which Malcolm was reported to have made his peace, given hostages – including his son Duncan – and acknowledged William’s superiority.

1086
Domesday survey begins
. Amid fears of Danish invasion circulating in 1085, William recruited mercenaries in France to garrison the country. As the year began, his council set in motion the Domesday survey, sending out officials to build up a record of the estates of England, their occupiers and revenues, tax liability and other resources. The initial process was probably over by 1 August, when William met with his aristocracy at Salisbury and they took a new oath of allegiance before departing to fight the French.

1087
William’s death
. William was taken ill while on campaign in France and died at the priory of St Gervais near Rouen on 9 September. He nominated his eldest son Robert to the duchy but it is unclear whether or not he named his second son, William Rufus, as king of England. However Rufus promptly left to secure this position and, aged about 27, he was crowned William II at Westminster later the same month.

1088
Odo’s rebellion
. Bishop Odo raised a rebellion against his nephew, William II, and was joined by major figures who favoured Robert as king. The rebellion centred on Odo’s castle of Rochester, which William besieged. The king rallied English support against his opponents, and his brother’s efforts to reinforce the rebels failed. The affair ended with the departure of Odo overseas, leaving the new king in control.

1093
Fall of Malcolm
. William II set about disposing of Malcolm of Scotland, whom he clearly viewed as over-mighty. Summoned to Gloucester, Malcolm was there refused admission to the king’s presence and the treaty he desired. He returned home in anger, raised an army and made a rash attack on Northumbria but was trapped and killed. Malcolm was succeeded by his brother, Donald. Eventually Malcolm’s daughter Matilda (or Maud) would marry Henry I, William I’s youngest son, in 1100, capturing the English throne for her lineage.

There had been three rulers of England in the year 1066, first Edward the Confessor, then Harold Godwineson and then William the Conqueror. So there would be in 1141 also, first Stephen, then Matilda and then Stephen (again). That Stephen would regain power was a result that no one would have expected after the battle that was fought at Lincoln on Candlemas Day, 2 February 1141.

On that day, outside the city walls, the Anglo-Norman lords, monitored by their kings, were a dynamic force. By 1135, they controlled most of the southern half of Wales, projecting their power from castles such as Cardiff, Brecon, Cardigan and Pembroke. The Scottish kings adapted to the same pattern, building castles and boroughs at centres such as Roxburgh, Berwick, Perth and Edinburgh, and Norman families such as the Bruces and Stewarts accepted their lordship.

The battle fought at Lincoln on 2 February 1141 seemed likely to prove no less significant than Assundun, if not Hastings. Outside the city walls, two substantial armies confronted each other. On the one side were King Stephen (
c
. 1092–1154, a grandson of William I, and Henry I’s onetime protégé) with his earls – many created recently as a reward for loyalty – along with the baronage of northern England and troops from Flanders under William of Ypres. Opposing him, in the name of the Empress Matilda (1102–67, widow of Henry V of Germany, only legitimate daughter of Henry I) were her half-brother, Robert, earl of Gloucester, Ranulf, earl of Chester – whose ambition to control Lincoln had precipitated the battle – other magnates and ‘a dreadful and unendurable mass of Welshmen’. It was a serious matter to fight an anointed king, and Stephen’s side at first thought their opponents would engage in jousting and then retire; they were wrong.

King Stephen was very quickly abandoned by his ‘false and factious earls’. He himself fought bravely, allegedly wielding a two-sided axe to good effect. But he was eventually captured. A voice rang out in the din of battle: ‘Come here, everybody, come here: I’ve got the king!’ This was William de Cahaignes, a vassal of the earl of Gloucester, and so indeed he had. Stephen surrendered to the earl and was taken to Gloucester, where he was ‘presented’ to the empress and then held in Bristol Castle.

The empress, though not present at Lincoln, was the main victor. She was her father’s chosen successor; oaths to support her had been sworn to her more than once in his lifetime, by Stephen amongst others; and after she had come to England in September 1139 she had gained control over south-west England and the Welsh Marches, ‘partly through fear, partly through respect’ (as the chronicler William of Malmesbury put it). Now all was set fair for Matilda to gain the crown that had been promised to her and control over the whole of England. No wonder that she was reported to have been ‘over the moon’ when she first had news of King Stephen’s capture.

The victory in battle needed legitimation. This was provided by a council of the English Church, which met at Winchester between 7 and 10 April 1141, under the presidency of Henry, bishop of Winchester (King Stephen’s younger brother and the papal legate), and Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury. This body, after secret deliberations, ‘elected’ the empress as ruler, giving her the new title of Lady of England – an unprecedented title that allowed the magnates of England who had sworn allegiance to Stephen now to transfer their loyalty to the empress. It also allowed her to assume regalian authority. Matilda issued orders to the sheriffs of the counties and the barons of the exchequer; she referred to ‘the pleas of my crown’; and she issued coins in her own name.

Yet from then on Matilda suffered a series of reverses. The first came in London. She could not claim a national authority unless she could establish a base in the capital. She was received by the Londoners around the middle of June, ‘with magnificent processions’; but she knew she was not among friends and her behaviour cost her some of the friends that she had. Stephen and his family had a strong base in London and the home counties, particularly in Kent and Essex. The queen mustered troops on the south bank of the Thames at Southwark. Her brother-in-law the bishop of Winchester joined her in urging that while Stephen was in captivity the lands he had controlled before he became king should be granted to his son, Eustace. ‘The empress would not hear of it,’ and her caution is understandable, but her refusal allowed her enemies to claim that other magnates would be treated in the same way and were liable to lose their lands. All the news from London brought tales of Matilda’s arrogance and insensitivity. She was losing the propaganda war.

While all this was happening in the corridors and the cloisters of power, in the streets of London there was turmoil. Lincoln had been sacked after the battle, and a reputation for hostility to mercantile ambition preceded the empress into the city. On 24 June, taking advantage of the cover of the midsummer revels, the townspeople swarmed out of the city gates, ‘like bees from a hive’, and made for Matilda’s lodgings at Westminster. She was ‘reclining at a well-cooked feast’, so it was reported, when she had news of their approach and was forced to flee in disarray.

Worse was to follow. After a meeting at Oxford in late July, she returned to Winchester. There she hoped to establish what she could claim to be a national base. In the course of five weeks’ fighting, though, Winchester also became too hot for her. She was in danger of being entrapped in the castle to the west of the city when she broke cover and escaped. She managed to reach Devizes in Wiltshire, ‘quite terrified’, slung across her horse ‘like a corpse’. Her brother, Robert of Gloucester, however, was captured by Stephen’s forces at Stockbridge Ford in Hampshire.

There were then discussions aimed at securing a permanent peace but all that could be agreed was that the king and the earl be exchanged for one another, ‘no other conditions being involved’, and that ‘they should return to the earlier position in the civil war’. The exchange took place on 1 November. It remained for a further Church council to restore Stephen to the throne and for him then to be recrowned at Canterbury on Christmas Day. This was more than a simple crown-wearing: King Stephen had been sullied by his captivity and the job needed to be done again. When Richard I was released from captivity and recrowned in 1194 the monks of Canterbury turned up the same order of service that they had used in 1141.

Stephen was king at the end of 1141, just as he had been at the beginning. This hardly seems to indicate a ‘turning point’ in English history. What made it so was not the events of the year but the reaction to them, in particular to the fact that king and empress resumed their hostility as though nothing had happened. ‘These indeed were harsh and ill-judged terms and bound to do harm to the entire country,’ wrote the London-based author of the
Gesta Stephani
. William of Malmesbury said that the year was ‘ill-omened and almost mortal to England’. The political commentators spoke with one voice and they spoke for the nation. The year 1141 had been one that had brought the whole political process into disrepute.

Over the next decade the lessons of 1141 would be learned. The churchmen had not listened to the lay magnates and had given Matilda the crown without insisting on a peace settlement. Henry of Winchester had been peremptory when caution was called for. Matilda had been imperious when conciliation was called for. She wished to rule in her own right but this was not acceptable to the English in 1141 any more than it had been in 1135.

The focus would now be on her son, ‘Henry, the son of the daughter of King Henry, the rightful heir of England and Normandy’ (the title that he gives himself in a charter of 1141). In 1153, with the clergy and the magnates acting together and mandating a peace process, this claim was accepted and in 1154, on Stephen’s death, he became Henry II, king of England. It would be a victory for statesmanship, a quality that had been lacking in 1141. Henry was carefully presented to the English not as an Angevin ruler but as a king in the line of the English succession that stretched back before the conquest of 1066. John of Salisbury, in his
Policraticus
, would insist that the new king ‘principally relied on fellow countrymen’; it was Stephen who was now represented as a ‘foreigner’.

The final lesson of 1141 was that the crown of England was not a commodity but a trust, and that all of the nation were trustees. It is that realization that makes the year a turning point in English, and later British, history.

*  *  *

With this in mind, it is important to note that England was a wealthy country in the first half of the twelfth century, and its economy grew rapidly. It grew because new lands were taken in from the forest and the fen, and because the scale of the market grew. The east coast ports mushroomed – some of them, such as Grimsby and Boston, had not even been mentioned in Domesday Book. Enterprising landowners, their rent rolls fixed, sought to make a profit from trade. The great fairs of England, such as Winchester, which had grown to sixteen days by 1155, were money-spinners for their lords. The upland areas of the British Isles grew more slowly, though there were significant mineral deposits, including the silver mines of Carlisle, the profits of which went to the Scots during Stephen’s reign.

In important respects, the ethos of the ruling class changed from one based on consumption to one based on profit. The professionalization of royal financial management was exemplified in the exchequer. The sheriffs accounted at Winchester twice a year, their returns collected in the first royal accounts, the ‘pipe rolls’, one of which survives for 1129–30. Another facet of the new professionalism was the growth of the Cistercian order. The monks were given partly cleared lands by their patrons; and their manors and granges were managed for profit.

After 1106, Henry I, the Conqueror’s youngest and most able son, ruled both England and Normandy. ‘He always attempted to give peace to his subject peoples’, said Orderic Vitalis, ‘and strictly punished law-breakers.’ He projected his authority beyond his frontiers. In 1114, ‘the Welsh princes came to him and became his vassals’. In 1119, the French king, Louis VI, was defeated in battle at Brémule. Henry’s brother-in-law, David of Scots (king of Scots, 1124–53), and his nephews, Theobald, Count of Blois, and Stephen, Count of Mortain (king of England, 1135–54), attended his court.

In the second quarter of the century what was becoming a family firm suffered a managerial crisis. The underlying cause was the uncertainty about, followed by a dispute over, the succession. Henry’s only legitimate son William, all were agreed, ‘would have obtained the kingdom as of right’. But he died in 1120 and Henry’s second marriage proved barren. The oaths that were sworn to his daughter, the Empress Matilda, for the first time on 1 January 1127 proved inadequate to secure her succession when Henry died, and served to weaken the new king, Stephen. There followed what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle described as ‘nineteen long winters’, during which ‘Christ and his saints were asleep’.