Bone of Contention

by Roberta Gellis

  A very brief summary of the history of England from the conquest to the beginning of Stephen’s reign was given in the Author’s Note to my previous book, A Personal Devil. Here I hope to explain the events that led up to Stephen’s dismissal of the bishop of Salisbury and his kin from the highest offices of the country.

  The Council at Oxford in June of 1139 was a turning point in the reign of King Stephen, who had not been the one and only possible heir to the throne of England when he succeeded King Henry I. King Henry’s only legitimate son, William the Aethling, had drowned in a crossing of the English Channel on 25 November, 1120. His death left three contenders with varying claims.

  First and foremost was Henry’s daughter Matilda, to whom King Henry had forced the barons to swear fealty in 1126, however, Matilda was a woman, and of less importance but still significant, she had a strong and unpleasant personality. Second was his eldest illegitimate son, Robert of Gloucester, who was deeply respected and admired by many of the barons of England, but Robert was a bastard, and his strong sense of honor restrained him from pushing his claim. Finally there was Stephen of Blois, a nephew greatly favored by the king, who always treated him like a son. Stephen had been raised mostly in the English Court, had been richly endowed with lands by his uncle, and was known and liked by much of the nobility.

  When Henry I died, Matilda made no move to seize her inheritance. Robert of Gloucester dutifully remained with Henry’s body to see him decently interred. Stephen set out from Boulogne as soon as he heard of his uncle’s death, and after being refused permission to land at Dover and repulsed at Canterbury—both of which owed homage to Robert of Gloucester—he sailed up the Thames to London. There he was enthusiastically received. He promised the Londoners that he would “gird himself with all his might to pacify the kingdom for the benefit of them all.” (John T, Appleby, The Troubled Reign of King Stephen 1135-1154. New York, Barnes and Noble Books, 1995, page 22.)

  Meanwhile Henry, bishop of Winchester, who was also Stephen’s younger brother, was hard at work convincing William Pont de l’Arche, the keeper of Henry I’s treasure, to welcome Stephen into Winchester Castle, which he did. Equally important, Henry convinced Roger, bishop of Salisbury, King Henry’s chief justiciar, to accept Stephen. Salisbury was King Henry’s most trusted servant, he had been left as regent in England when Henry had cause to travel abroad. When Salisbury acknowledged Stephen’s claim to the throne, many of the nobility followed his lead. Moreover Salisbury and the bishop of Winchester joined forces to convince William of Corbeil, the archbishop of Canterbury, to crown Stephen king. Once anointed, to the medieval mind whether his was the best claim or not, Stephen was king.

  Thus, with the crown, King Stephen inherited the bishop of Salisbury, who was of course confirmed in all his honors and possessions. Salisbury had held great power for a long time and had, as was the custom of the time, elevated his relatives to positions of power. Thus his nephew Nigel was bishop of Ely and the king’s Treasurer, and his son, Roger le Poer (because he wasn’t yet a bishop), was the king’s Chancellor. Among them they controlled the entire government of England. Salisbury had also, with King Henry’s approval—and sometimes when the king was abroad without specific approval but with his trust and concurrence—appointed most of the sheriffs, who ran the governments of the individual shires. Thus, indirectly, Salisbury also influenced the local governments.

  The advantage of this inheritance to Stephen was that there was no disruption at all in the government of England when he became king. The disadvantage was that Stephen—no administrative genius—had not the faintest idea of how the realm was governed. Over the first few years of Stephen’s reign, the advantages of the inheritance far outweighed the disadvantages. There were minor rebellions of nobles who were dissatisfied with Stephen’s failure to right what they considered their wrongs, and there was an invasion by the Scots, whose king had sworn to support Matilda as queen and used that oath as an excuse to attempt a seizure of English territory.

  Dealing with these matters was of prime importance, and Stephen managed them for the most part satisfactorily so that his grip on the country became more secure. Perhaps, as more and more of the barons gave him oaths of fealty, he began to believe that the machinery of government, which he did not understand, was unimportant.

  Nor, in truth, did the king have time, even had he been willing, to learn the intricacies of government. There were problems abroad, in Normandy, and those were not concluded so satisfactorily. One of Stephen’s favorites, the leader of his Flemish mercenaries, William of Ypres, tried to rid Stephen of Robert of Gloucester (the second claimant to the throne), but the attempt at ambush failed, multiplied Stephen’s problems, and cost William of Ypres much of the king’s confidence.

  William of Ypres was not Stephen’s only favorite. The king had also reestablished relationships that had weakened over the years while he was away from England after his marriage to Matilda of Boulogne. The strongest of these relationships was with Waleran, count of Meulan, head of the great Norman family of Beaumont. Waleran was clever and a good soldier, but self-seeking and very ambitious. He too had a family whose power he wished to extend, but one prime favorite stood in his way. The man closest to the king was his brother, Henry, bishop of Winchester, who had done so much to win the throne for him.

  In 1136, William of Corbeil, the archbishop of Canterbury who had anointed Stephen king, died. Henry, bishop of Winchester (and most of the other bishops of England) expected that the king would appoint him to that position at once, but he did not. It was possible that Stephen realized his brother was cleverer than he, and Henry certainly had a stronger personality. It was not impossible that Stephen feared if Henry became archbishop of Canterbury, ruler of the Church of England, that there would be two kings in the realm, and the archbishop would be the stronger. Still, Stephen could not appoint any other English bishop without a violent breach with his brother, not to mention that there was not another English bishop equally fitted for the office.

  Thus the archbishopric was kept vacant for two years and then, in December of 1138, Theobald, abbot of Bec, was elected to the office when Henry had been conveniently involved in Church business at a distance. Theobald had only been abbot of Bec for two years and was virtually unknown—except by Waleran de Meulan, who was the lay patron of Bec. Was it too much to suspect that Waleran had proposed Theobald to Stephen, and that Theobald’s primary qualification for the office was that he was not Henry?

  There is no hard evidence one way or the other, but the appointment of Theobald accomplished one thing that Waleran must have desired. It opened a gulf between the brothers, Henry was angry and bitter, Stephen felt guilty. The ease and confidence that had existed between them was gone. Henry was no longer the first advisor to the king.

  Other problems had also arisen. William of Ypres’s action in Normandy had borne bitter fruit. Robert of Gloucester, who had actually sworn fealty to Stephen in 1136, withdrew that fealty in June 1138. And in 1139, Matilda at last began to move against Stephen. She appealed to the pope against Stephen, who she said had not only committed perjury in violating his oath to receive her as heir to King Henry, but had usurped the throne as well.

  Meanwhile Waleran had not been idle. In 1138, he was made earl of Worcester. His twin brother Robert was already earl of Leicester, William de Warenne; his half brother, was earl of Surrey; his first cousin, Roger de Beaumont, who was married to Waleran’s half-sister, was earl of Warwick; his younger brother, Hugh Pauper—because he was not yet as well endowed as his older brothers—was soon created earl of Bedford; his brother-in-law, Gilbert de Clare, was created earl of Pembroke.

  By 1139 when Theobald left for Rome to receive his pallium from the pope accompanied by five other bishops, part of whose duties was to defend the king against Matilda’s appeal, Waleran and his close kin held six of the earldoms of England. Earl was then the highest rank of English nobility, but although the earls of a county were supposed to ov
ersee the work of the sheriffs and defend the counties, the government under Salisbury operated so efficiently that being earl was essentially a functionless honor. The path to real power for Waleran and his kin was blocked by Salisbury and his.

  Stephen knew his uncle, King Henry, had trusted Salisbury and his coterie enough to leave Salisbury as regent of the kingdom when he was absent, and Salisbury had been among the first to welcome him. However, in the year since Robert of Gloucester had cried defiance and Matilda had appealed to the pope to restore her kingdom to her, Salisbury had strengthened the castles that he held for the king and those he had built himself—he said for the glory and safety of his diocese—and had stocked them with all kinds of supplies, as if for war or against siege.

  It is not impossible that Stephen, who was a good war leader, noticed these uncomfortable facts for himself. It is equally possible that Waleran also made note of what was happening, drew it to the king’s attention, and asked whether Salisbury might be preparing to use those keeps and supplies to support Robert of Gloucester when he invaded England, which was expected.

  There had been enough rebellions by dissatisfied nobles and some who were truly distressed over their violated oaths to Matilda that Stephen had grown mistrustful. He was suspicious also of the bishop of Ely’s (Salisbury’s nephew) management of the finances of the realm. The constant wars Stephen had been fighting were an expensive business, and he was growing poorer while Salisbury grew richer. Better safe than sorry, the king must have thought, and decided to be rid of Salisbury. In fact, the suspicions were most likely justified. Although there was a tremendous uproar over the way the situation was handled, no one really attempted to deny that Salisbury and his supporters were plotting treason.

  Being rid of them was easier said than done, however. Stephen feared the reaction of his barons if he simply dismissed Salisbury and his kin without a reasonably obvious cause. He certainly did not want to use his suspicion that Salisbury intended to abandon him and espouse the cause of Robert of Gloucester. It was all too likely that many nobles of the kingdom would follow his lead, as they had in acknowledging Stephen.

  Nor did Stephen want any quarrel with the Church. In an attempt to mend fences with his brother, the king had appealed to the pope to name Henry the papal legate. Since this would give Henry authority even over the newly appointed archbishop, Stephen hoped Henry would be appeased. Unfortunately he was not. Henry understood all too well that the legatine authority lasted only during the lifetime of the pope who had issued it, an archbishop would be archbishop until he himself died.

  Stephen needed to walk a sword’s edge between allowing Salisbury to do whatever he wanted and bringing down on himself the wrath of the Church. What seems to have been arranged was that the bishop’s armed retainers were provoked into a clash with the retainers of Alain, count of Brittany. In the fight one knight was killed, Alain’s nephew was badly wounded, and Alain’s men were put to flight.

  This was a breach of the king’s peace, which was prohibited behavior during any Council called by the king. The bishops were summoned to Stephen’s presence, and he required them to give up possession of their castles as guarantees of their trustworthiness. Carefully, Stephen made no demands on the property of the Church nor did he require the bishops to abate their authority over their dioceses. He was asserting, as his predecessors back to the days of William the Bastard had done before, “that his ministers were answerable to him for their actions, that castles could be held only at the king’s pleasure and must be surrendered on demand, and that ecclesiastics who held secular offices were accountable for their conduct of those offices.” (Appleby, op. cit., page 69.)

  Unfortunately Salisbury and his kin had committed no real act that was questionable, nor had the bishops failed in their conduct of their offices. To many of the nobility and all of the clergy, Stephen’s behavior was high-handed and based on a patently fabricated cause. Although there is a strong possibility that he was right in his suspicions, and it was certainly his right to dismiss and appoint officers in his government, the king’s methods were violent and unacceptable. He, himself, had broken the king’s peace.

  The results of Stephen’s action were disastrous in the long run—although it is entirely possible that the disasters would have occurred even if he had not acted. However, the events of Bone of Contention end with the summoning and demands on the bishop of Salisbury and his son and nephews. Further events will be addressed in later books.

  Roberta Gellis

  Flushing, Michigan

  To my brother Roger with love in particular for the warmth and hospitality with which he has so often welcomed us into his home

  Copyright © 2002 by Roberta Gellis

  Originally published by Forge [978-0765300195]

  Electronically published in 2015 by Belgrave House

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  This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.