Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/163

 The treaty was ratified in a great council at Winchester, and proclaimed by Stephen from London (, i. 18), which he and Henry entered together. On 13 Jan. 1154 they met again at Oxford, and Stephen made the barons do homage to Henry as their future sovereign. At their next meeting, at Dunstable, Henry complained that the king was conniving at the maintenance of some ‘adulterine castles’ whose demolition had been stipulated in the treaty. Stephen put him off with an excuse, and soon after went with him to Canterbury, and thence to meet the Count of Flanders at Dover. There the king's already shattered nerves received a double shock, from an accident which befell his only surviving son William, and from the discovery of a plot among his own Flemish mercenaries against Henry's life. He hurried the young duke out of the country; then he bravely girded up his failing strength to carry on the work which Henry had begun of bringing the barons to order and reducing the adulterine castles; and in this he met with considerable success. His last exploit was the capture of Drax (Yorkshire). At Michaelmas he was at a council in London; thence he went to Dover for another meeting with the Count of Flanders; here a sudden illness seized him, and he died in St. Martin's priory on 25 Oct. He was buried beside his wife and son in Feversham Abbey, which he had founded. [For his children see .]

Stephen's reputation has suffered from his position in the series of English sovereigns between two much greater men. He lacked the gifts of character and intellect which specially fitted both Henry I, his predecessor, and Henry II, his successor, for the task of governing a country in the transitional stage of development which England was passing through in the twelfth century; but he was in some ways a better man than either of them, and under circumstances less unfavourable than those in which he was placed, he might not have been a worse king. His failure as a ruler was in great part due to causes beyond his control; moreover, the failure itself has been considerably exaggerated. The fairest summary of his character is that given incidentally by the English chronicler: ‘He was a mild man, soft and good, and did no justice’—in other words, he was neither strong enough nor stern enough to crush the anarchic tendencies of a feudalism which it had taxed the utmost energies of Henry I to keep in check, and which, twenty years after Stephen's death, even Henry II was hardly able to subdue.

[Ordericus Vitalis, ed. Le Prévost (Soc. de l'Hist. de France); William of Newburgh, lib. i., Gesta Stephani, Richard of Hexham, Robert of Torigni (Chronicles of Stephen and Henry II, vols. i. iii. and iv.), with Mr. Howlett's prefaces; William of Malmesbury's Historia Novella, the English Chronicle, Henry of Huntingdon, John of Hexham (in Sym. Dunelm. vol. ii.), Gervase of Canterbury, vol. i. (all in Rolls Ser.); Continuation of Florence of Worcester (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Historia Pontificalis (Pertz's Monum. Germ. Hist. vol. xx.); Stubbs's Select Charters, Constitutional History, vol. i., and Early Plantagenets; Round's Geoffrey de Mandeville. See also J. R. Green's paper on London and her Election of Stephen, in Old London (Roy. Archæolog. Institute, London Congress, 1866).]

 STEPHEN, usually known as (d. 1112), abbot of St. Mary's, York, took the monastic habit at Whitby in 1078. The Whitby monastery had been ruined by the Danes, but it had been partly restored by William de Percy, first baron Percy [q. v.], and there were a few monks living there when Stephen entered the house. The monks soon chose him as their prior. Percy's former friendship for the foundation, however, had changed to enmity, and his oppression, together with the depredations of pirates and robbers, reduced the house to such sore straits that Stephen had to appeal to the king. William I gave them land at Lastingham, not far off, and thither they removed. Still Percy's ill-will pursued them, and, though Stephen followed the king into Normandy, he obtained no redress. But Alan, earl of Brittany, an old friend of Stephen, now came to his aid, and persuaded him and his monks to remove once more to the neighbourhood of York. Here he gave them the church of St. Olave's and four acres of land upon which to build offices. This land was, however, claimed by Thomas I [q. v.], archbishop of York. Again Stephen, through Alan, appealed to the king, and the latter promised to make good the loss to the see of York. William Rufus visited the new foundation at York which was named St. Mary's Abbey, and made a fresh grant of land and himself assisted in laying the foundations of a new church. When the prosperity of the house seemed secure, Archbishop Thomas renewed his suit for the original four acres, and Stephen appeased him only by obtaining for the see of York the grant of St. Stephen's Church in the city from the king, and by himself adding a voluntary gift of land. Stephen died in 1112.

Stephen wrote: ‘De fundatione Abbatiæ Sanctæ Mariæ Virginis Eboraci anno ab Incarnatione Domini 1088,’ which gives an