Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/67

 Henry at the consecration of St. Albans Abbey Church (, ed. Coxe, ii. 193). She died at Westminster on 1 May 1118, and was buried in the abbey. Westminster had been her abode for many years; soon after the birth of her son she had ceased to follow the wanderings of her husband's court. It is possible that she accompanied him in one visit to Normandy, in 1105–6 (Ann. Winton. a. 1107; the date, as regards her, must be a year too late); but in later years, while he was ‘busy elsewhere,’ she stayed at home. Like her mother, she was very pious, wearing a hair shirt, going barefoot round the churches in Lent, and devoting herself especially to the care of lepers, washing their feet and kissing their scars, besides building a hospital for them at St. Giles-in-the-Fields, London (, Chron. Maj. ed. Luard, ii. 144; Monast. Angl. vol. vi. pt. ii. p. 635). The first Austin priory in England, Holy Trinity, Aldgate (London), was founded by her in 1108 (, Will. Newb. vol. iii. App. p. 690). Another of her good works was the construction of two bridges, with a causeway between them, over the two branches of the river Lea, near Stratford, instead of the dangerous passage of Old Ford; she gave the maintenance of these bridges in charge to the nuns of Barking, with a grant of land to provide funds for the purpose (Abbr. Placit. 6 Edw. II. p. 316). In her convent days she had ‘learned and practised the literary art,’ and six letters written by her to Anselm ( Epp. 1. iii. epp. 55, 93, 96, 119, 1. iv. epp. 74, 76), as well as one to Pope Paschal II (, Patrol. vol. 163, cols. 466–7) display a scholarship unusual among laymen, and probably still more among women, in her day. Another of her correspondents was the learned Bishop Hildebert of Le Mans, who had probably made her acquaintance in England in 1099, and who wrote to her several friendly letters (, Epp. l. i. epp. 7, 9, l. iii. ep. 12, ed. Migne, vol. 171), and two highly complimentary poetical addresses (ib. vol. 171, cols. 1408, 1443–5). He sings of her beauty; William of Malmesbury thought her merely ‘not ill-favoured.’ She was a warm patroness of verse and song; she gave lavishly to musical clerks, to scholars, poets, and strangers of all sorts, who were drawn to her court by the fame of her bounty, and who spread her praises far and wide. On the other hand, the tenants on her estates were too often fleeced by her bailiffs in order to provide funds for this ill-regulated generosity. Yet in English tradition she is emphatically ‘Mold the good queen.’ Not only was the Confessor's prophecy of the re-grafting of the ‘green tree’ (Vita Edw. Conf. ed. Luard, p. 431) fulfilled through her marriage and her children; Robert of Gloucester over and over again ascribes to her a direct, personal, and most beneficial influence on the condition of England under Henry I, and finally declares that ‘the goodness that she did here to England cannot all be here written, nor by any man understood.’ 

MATILDA (1103?–1152), wife of Stephen, king of England, was the only child of Eustace III, count of Boulogne, and his wife, Mary, daughter of Malcolm III, king of Scots, and Margaret, sister of Eadgar the Ætheling. The marriage of Eustace and Mary took place soon after that of Mary's sister [see, 1080–1118] with the English king, Henry I, and Matilda of Boulogne was probably born about 1103. Before 1125 Henry gave her in marriage to his favourite nephew, Stephen of Blois, whom he had endowed with large possessions in England and Normandy. Eustace also held considerable estates in England, and these, as well as the county of Boulogne, had passed to Matilda by his death shortly before her marriage. The possession of Boulogne gave her husband command over the shortest passage between Gaul and England, and thus enabled Stephen, on Henry's death in December 1135, to seize the English crown before its destined heiress, the Empress Matilda (1102–1167) [q. v.] could enforce her claim. On Easter day, 22 March 1136, his wife was crowned at Westminster. When the barons rose against him in 1138, she besieged one of them, Walkelyn Maminot, in Dover castle by land, while a squadron of ships from Boulogne blockaded him by sea till he was driven to surrender. In the spring of 1139, she reconciled her husband with her uncle David I, king of Scots [q. v.]; the terms of the treaty were settled between her and David's son, Henry [q. v.], at Durham, 9 April. When at the close of the year civil war began on the empress's landing in England, the queen exerted herself to gain the alliance of France; she went over sea with her eldest son, Eustace, and in February 1140 secured his investiture as duke of the Normans and his betrothal with the