Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/162

 which he did give up was Lincoln, and there Stephen kept Christmas (1146) with a splendour unexampled for many years past.

In spring 1148 Matilda withdrew oversea, and her husband proposed another trial of the claims of the rival sovereigns in the papal court, and called upon Stephen to lay down his regal authority pending its decision. This Stephen refused to do, unless Geoffrey would likewise surrender the Norman duchy which he had conquered four years before. Hereupon Geoffrey and Matilda transferred to their son Henry [see ] the task of vindicating his claim to his grandfather's throne; and in spring 1149 Henry came with a small force to England. According to one contemporary writer, finding himself short of money to pay his troops, he appealed to the generosity of his royal cousin and rival, and Stephen sent him the needed sum. The story fits well enough with Stephen's character, but scarcely with that of Henry; and its details require somewhat violent handling to bring them into harmony with ascertained facts (see, Pref. to Chron. of Stephen, vol. iii. pp. xvi–xx, and Round in Engl. Hist. Rev. v. 747–50). Stephen had just put down a new revolt of the earls of Chester and Pembroke when Henry was knighted by the Scottish king at Carlisle on 22 May. Stephen hurried with all his forces to York; but Henry and David retreated to Scotland, and Henry soon returned to Normandy. Next year (1150) Stephen attacked Worcester, which was held by the Count of Meulan, one of Henry's chief partisans. He burned and plundered the town, but failed to win the castle. In 1151 he tried again, but lacked leisure or perseverance to maintain the siege in person; on his withdrawal his siege-works were destroyed by the Earl of Leicester, Meulan's brother, and ‘so the king's care and labour perished and came to nought.’

Stephen had now been for four years at strife with the church. First, he had refused to recognise the papal deposition (1147) of his nephew William [see ] from the see of York, and to acknowledge Henry Murdac [q. v.], whom Eugenius III had consecrated as archbishop in William's stead. Next, he had forbidden Theobald of Canterbury to obey the pope's summons to a council at Reims in Lent 1148, and vowed that if the primate did go he should not be allowed to come home again. Theobald went nevertheless; and, although his intercession saved the king from the excommunication with which Eugenius proposed to punish these insults to the church, Stephen banished him on his return. An interdict soon compelled him to withdraw the sentence; but so strongly did he suspect both primate and pope of being in league with the Angevins against him that in 1149 he forbade the great lawyer Vacarius [q. v.], who had come to England at Theobald's invitation, to lecture at Oxford on the Roman law (, Polycraticus, l. viii. c. 22; date from, an. 1149), and in 1150 he refused a safe-conduct to a papal legate who wanted to pass through England to Ireland. Early in 1152, however, he reversed his policy. He was now anxious to secure the succession to the throne for his eldest son Eustace; so he made his peace with Archbishop Henry of York, and sent him to Rome to plead with Eugenius for permission to have the youth crowned. This the pope would not grant. On 6 April (‘Ann. Winton. Contin.’ in Ungedruckte anglo-normann. Geschichtsquellen, p. 82). Eustace was acknowledged in a council at London as heir to the throne; but the bishops refused to crown him in face of the papal prohibition. Stephen shut them all up together and tried to frighten them into submission; but the archbishop of Canterbury escaped oversea, and without him no coronation was possible. At the opening of 1153 Stephen was called away from the siege of Wallingford by tidings that Henry of Anjou had returned and was blockading Malmesbury. Beneath the walls of Malmesbury the rivals fronted each other for a moment, with only the Avon between them, and both at the head of their troops drawn up in battle array; but a storm blew up from the west and beat in the faces of the king and his men with such violence that they were compelled to retreat. Henry next besieged Crowmarsh; Stephen followed to relieve it; the barons persuaded them to hold, across a narrow reach of the Thames, a parley, which ended in a truce and a promise on Stephen's part that Crowmarsh should be razed. Within a few months his spirit was broken by the deaths of his wife and his son, and the barons' reluctance to agree to a settlement was overcome by the successes of Henry and the diplomacy of the primate. On 6 Nov. Stephen and Henry made a treaty at Wallingford (date from, an. 1153; place from ed. Coxe, ii. 255), whereby it was agreed that Stephen should remain king for life, that Henry should succeed him, and that meanwhile the actual work of government should be done in his name by Henry as his adoptive son (cf. Engl. Chron. an. 1140, , i. 296, and  i. 212).