Stephen of England (1092-25 October 1154) was the King of England from 22 December 1135 to 25 October 1154, succeeding Henry I of England and preceding Henry II of England. He was the nephew of Henry, and in 1135 he crossed the English Channel from his domains in Normandy to take the throne of England after Henry I's death.
During Stephen's tenure, England devolved into "The Anarchy", during which Henry I's son Henry Plantagenet vied for control of England with the help of Stephen's brother Robert of Gloucester. In the 1141 Battle of Lincoln he was defeated and captured, but Robert was captured soon after at the Rout of Winchester. In the summer of 1153, Stephen and Henry agreed to the Treaty of Wallingford, which designated Henry and the House of Anjou as the successors of Stephen.
Biography[]
Count of Blois[]
Stephen was born in 1092, the son of Count Etienne of Blois and Baroness Adele of Beaumont. His father was from the House of Blois, ruling the County of Blois in Normandy; his mother came from the House of Normandy, a more powerful dynasty that ruled the Kingdom of England and the Duchy of Normandy. Through his mother, he was the grandson of William the Conqueror and therefore the nephew of Henry I of England. He was the brother of Count Guillaume of Blois, Thibault II of Champagne, and Count Henri of Winchester. Stephen was liked by his uncle King Henry, who allied with him due to being his nephew as well as due to the negligible possibility of him becoming an enemy of his. Stephen married Countess Mathilde of Boulogne, the daughter and only heiress of Count Eustache III of Boulogne.
In 1120, Stephen planned to head to England on board the White Ship along with 300 other passengers, including Prince William Adelin, the heir apparent to England. However, he suffered from diarrhea and was concerned about overcrowding, so he stayed behind. The ship sunk in a disaster that left all but two dead, and William drowned. This caused a dispute over primogeniture succession, as there were no other male heirs to the king. However, a common pattern of seizing the throne had been in place since 1066: William the Conqueror seized control of England from Harold Godwinson in 1066, William II of England fought Robert of Normandy over the succession, and Henry I had to seize Normandy by force. Only Henry's daughter Matilda could be an heir, but as she was a woman, this was unlikely. In 1125 she lost the title of Empress of the Holy Roman Empire after the death of Henry V of Germany, and in 1128 she remarried to Count Geoffrey V of Anjou, a member of the House of Anjou; the Normans and Angevins were mortal enemies. In 1135, Matilda and her new husband rebelled in Normandy against their father King Henry after he refused to grant them control of the duchy, and Henry fell ill and died.
Succession to England[]
Following the death of Henry, most of the Anglo-Norman nobility of England believed that Stephen would be the best candidate to succeed him. He was extremely wealthy and well-mannered, while he also casually laughed and ate with his servants and soldiers. While Matilda and Geoffroy continued to lead a rebellion in the Aquitaine region of south-western France against the royal army - which ironically consisted partially of supporters of Matilda such as Stephen's brother Robert of Gloucester - Stephen took the opportunity to travel to England, where the people of London chose him as the new king, believing that he would grant them new privileges. On 22 December 1135, he was crowned as king.
Stephen's first acts as king were to grant much of his oversized demesne to nobles at his court, such as Count Fraunk of Mortain or Count William of Sussex, while his sons Count Gervase of Northumberland, Count Baldwin of Dorset, and Count Eustace of Cumberland also gained their fiefs. However, Stephen faced some issues pretty early in his reign. Several of his vassals had negative opinions because he was a foreigner, he had a short rule, and they were ambitious. Count William of Surrey plotted to make Henry I's illegitimate son Gilbert de Normandie the new king, while Count Tancred of Lincoln backed William de Normandie. Stephen appointed Count Jean of Eu as Master of the Hunt to increase relations with his Norman subjects, and he made Jean's younger brother Etienne Baron Etienne of Avranches.
Campaigns in France[]
On 26 December 1135 Stephen began his reign with a campaign to press his claims in France against the rival King Louis VI of France, hoping to acquire large amounts of territory around Normandy. His forces were smaller than the French, who had the advantage of amassing forces across the whole country to face an enemy that had to ferry small amounts of troops at a time over the English Channel. Stephen himself was captured on 31 May 1136, and Count Walter of Oxford became his regent. By 22 June, Walter had negotiated a hasty truce, ending his first campaign in France.
Western Europe in 1137
However, in late 1136 he mounted a second invasion of France at the head of a large army of mercenaries from as far as Germany and Italy, and he raised his fleet levies, building a navy that was able to ferry the mercenaries across the Channel. Stephen ironically campaigned against his own wife, as Boulogne was a part of France. His commander Condottiere Eneko of Navarrese Company and his army of Basques captured Paris and other major French cities, but Louis continued to fight on for a short while after Paris' fall to England. On 16 January 1137 King Louis VI surrendered to Stephen, ceding all of Stephen's claims to him. In doing so, Stephen usurped the County of Chartres from his brother Thibault, who was a vassal of Louis.
Hoping to achieve better stewardship, he purchased a run-down old inn on 1 June 1137, and he evicted the vagrants in the old inn. He renamed the inn to "The Mead Fountain", and he added 10% salt to turnips that were put out for sampling so that the guests would be more thirsty for some mead. However, on 2 August 1137 his peacetime rule was interrupted when he found out that William FitzSulgwen was hiring men for an attack on him. Stephen decided to plot his assassination, recruiting Count Roger of Tarragona, Countess Agnes of Tarragona, Maurice FitzGerald, Alfons, Baron Bohemond of Sant Cugat, William de Windsor, Hugh de Morville, and Busilla to kill William.
Family[]
Stephen was from the noble House of Blois, and he married Countess Mathilde of Boulogne. He had three children:
- Count Gervase of Northumberland (born 1120)
- Count Baldwin of Dorset (born 1126)
- Count Eustace of Cumberland (born 1129)