Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/71

 fairness and skill in dealing with the case (ib. v. 142, 145–50, 161, 194–5, 361, 421, 423). Two letters of hers are extant; one, written in 1166–7 at the pope's request, beseeching Thomas to be reconciled with the king (ib. vi. 128–9); the other, of uncertain date, is addressed to Louis of France, and pleads for a cessation of his hostilities against Henry (, Hist. Franc. Scriptt. iv. 722). Matilda had a dangerous illness in 1160. She died, after much suffering from fever and decay of strength, at Notre-Dame des Prés, early in the morning of 10 Sept. 1167. On her deathbed she took the veil as a nun of Fontevraud (, in, Nova Biblioth. ii. 317). Archbishop Rotrou of Rouen and Bishop Arnulf of Lisieux officiated at her burial before the high altar in the abbey church of Bec—the resting place which she had, despite her father's remonstrances, chosen for herself thirty-three years before (Cont. W. Jumièges, p. 306). In 1263 the church, and with it Matilda's tomb, was destroyed by fire. In 1282, when the church had been restored, search was made for her remains, and they were found, wrapped in an ox-hide (Chron. Becc. ed. Porée, p. 129). The new tomb in which they were reburied was stripped of its ornaments by the English soldiers who sacked Bec in 1421 (ib. p. 91). In 1684 a brass plate, with a long inscription, was placed over the grave by the brethren of St. Maur, who had lately come into possession of the abbey (, Anglo-Norm. Antiquities, p. 89). This, too, perished in 1793, and the church itself was demolished in 1841. The leaden coffin of the empress, however, was re-discovered in 1846, and next year her remains were translated to what her father in 1134 had told her was their only fitting abode, the cathedral church of Rouen (Revue de Rouen, 1847, pp. 43–4, 699).

Twice in her life—in 1134 and again in 1160—Matilda had made careful testamentary arrangements for the distribution of her wealth to the poor, and to various hospitals, churches, and monasteries, of which Bec was chief. Her final dispositions included a large bequest for the completion of a stone bridge which she had begun to build over the Seine at Rouen. She founded several religious houses, and was a benefactress to many more. A little settlement of anchorites at Radmore in Staffordshire, on land granted by her in 1142, grew under her fostering care into a Cistercian monastery, which Henry II removed to Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, in 1155 (Monast. Angl. v. 446). Stanley Abbey sprang from a small Cistercian house founded at Lockwell, Wiltshire as a cell to Quarr, Isle of Wight, by her son Henry, acting in her name and his own, in 1149 or 1150 (ib. pp. 563–4). The origin of another English house of the same order, Bordesley, Worcestershire, has been ascribed to her; but this is doubtful (ib. pp. 407, 409–10). A chapel of Notre-Dame du Vœu at Cherbourg, founded by William the Conqueror, formed the nucleus of an Austin priory which she established at some time between 1132 and 1150 (, Neustria Pia, p. 813; Gallia Christiana, vol. xi. instr. col. 229). A Cistercian house bearing the same name, but also known as Valasse, near Lillebonne, was built between 1148 and 1157, the result of a vow which she had made when blockaded in Oxford in 1142 (, pp. 851–2). A Premonstratensian priory at Silly-en-Gouffern, near Argentan, was built on land given by her between 1151 and 1161 (cf. ib. pp. 830–1, and, a. 1167); and in the last year of her life she founded a Cistercian abbey at La Noë, near Evreux (Gallia Christ. vol. xi. instr. col. 133; the date there given to the foundation-charter is disproved by internal evidence). In Matilda's later years the harsh and violent temper which had marred one period of her career seems to have been completely mastered by the real nobleness of character which had gained for her, as a mere girl, the esteem of her first husband and the admiration of his subjects, and which even in her worst days had won and kept for her the devotion of men like Robert of Gloucester, Miles of Hereford, and Brian FitzCount. Arnulf of Lisieux (Opera, ed. Giles, p. 41) called her ‘a woman who had nothing of the woman in her;’ but the words were evidently meant as praise, not blame. One German chronicler gives her the title which English writers give to her mother, ‘the good Matilda’ (Chron. Repkav., in, Rer. Germ. Scriptt. vol. iii. col. 357). Germans, Normans, and English are agreed as to her beauty. The sole existing portrait of her is that on her great seal; a majestic figure, seated, robed and crowned, and holding in her right hand a sceptre terminating in a lily-flower. This seal had been made for her in Germany, before her husband's coronation at Rome; its legend is ‘Matilda, by God's grace Queen of the Romans.’ The style which she commonly used in her charters was ‘Matilda the Empress, King Henry's daughter;’ during her struggle with Stephen, 1141–7, she sometimes added the title ‘Lady of the English;’ that of ‘Queen of the English’ occurs only twice, early in 1141 (, Geoff. Mandeville, pp. 70–7). As Matthew Paris says (Chron. Maj. i. 435), the significance of her