THE EARL
(A HAMMER FOR PRINCES)
A Novel of the Anarchy
by Cecelia Holland
BOOKS BY CECELIA HOLLAND
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The Soul Thief
The Angel and the Sword
Lily Nevada
An Ordinary Woman
Railroad Schemes
Valley of the Kings
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Pacific Street
The Bear Flag
The Lords of Vaumartin
Pillar of the Sky
The Belt of Gold
The Sea Beggars
Home Ground
City of God
Two Ravens
Floating Worlds
Great Maria
The Death of Attila
The Earl
Antichrist
Until the Sun Falls
The Kings in Winter
Rakóssy
The Firedrake
FOR CHILDREN
The King’s Road
Ghost on the Steppe
website: www.thefiredrake.com
THE EARL
A HAMMER FOR PRINCES)
A Novel of the Anarchy
by Cecelia Holland
Copyright © 1971 by Cecelia Holland
All rights reserved
Library of Congress catalog number 78-154913
ISBN 978-1460925904
This edition copyright © 2011 by Cecelia Holland
INTRODUCTION
In 1120, the only legitimate son of King Henry I of England drowned in the wreck of the White Ship. The King married again, but as it became evident that this union would not produce another heir, Henry’s attention turned toward his remaining legitimate child, his daughter Matilda (or Maud), who because of her marriage to the German Emperor Henry V is called the Empress.
Her husband the emperor having died in 1125, Matilda (or Maud) made her way back to England. In 1127, her father forced his tenants-in-chief in both England and Normandy (which he had taken from his brother Robert Curthose--"Little Britches"--in 1106) to swear homage to Matilda as his heiress and successor.
The barons were not happy. They demanded the right to counsel and consent when the king married off his daughter a second time. No one doubted that he would; the nature of the Anglo-Norman kingship required a king, not a queen.
Henry was an unscrupulous, crabby, suspicious man. The husband he chose for the heiress of England and Normandy was the son of the Count of Anjou, traditionally Normandy’s enemy and rival. The wisdom of this choice was not immediately apparent, especially to the Norman barons, and foreseeing this, the king arranged the marriage in secret so that they would have no chance to object. In 1128 Matilda married Geoffrey, heir to Anjou.
The barons were furious, and the bride and groom disliked each other, but in 1133 Henry was presented with his first lawful grandson, who was named for him. The king, now in his sixties, hastened to extract another oath from his barons, securing the succession firmly on Matilda and her heirs.
Late in the following year, Henry I ate a dish of lampreys, always chancy in those times, and died of acute indigestion.
None of the possible heirs was in England. Matilda was in Anjou. Her obvious rivals, the grandsons of William the Conqueror, were in Normandy. Her half brother, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, was a bastard, but William the Conqueror had been a bastard, and Gloucester was able and respected. Her cousins, the sons of the Conqueror’s daughter Adela and Stephen of Blois, were wealthy, powerful, admired men. In fact, the eldest of them, Theobald, Count of Blois, was the choice of the Norman barons to become their duke.
Theobald’s younger brother Stephen was quicker or, more likely, had been planning longer. He raced across the Channel to London, where the people acclaimed him king, and sped on to Winchester. Another brother, Henry, was, happily, Bishop of Winchester, and he was waiting there, with the head of Henry I’s administration and the keeper of Henry I’s treasury, to greet Stephen and give him the old king’s money and seals and their own support.
Stephen had, of course, sworn the oath to Matilda, twice, and so had the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose duty it was to anoint England’s king. Who should now conveniently appear but Hugh Bigod, a baron who had attended the king on his deathbed, and who swore that Henry with his dying breath had repudiated his daughter and named Stephen as his heir. Freed of the oath, the archbishop anointed Stephen king of England.
When the news reached Normandy, Theobald reluctantly gave up the duchy to his brother. The entire operation had taken only three weeks from the death of the old king.
At first, the other barons accepted Stephen. His personal holdings, in England and in Normandy, were extensive, he was rich, he was a courageous and chivalrous knight, and he was extravagantly generous. Even the old king's bastard Gloucester, after some hesitation, did Stephen homage. Robert Beaumont, Earl of Leicester, and Waleran of Meulan, the twin brothers who were heads of the great House of Beaumont, became Stephen’s chief advisers. Matilda appealed to the Roman Curia for justice, but she was only a woman, and nobody was inclined to help her.
Stephen’s most splendid moment, however, was the coup that made him king. Before long, he had managed to alienate his brother the Bishop of Winchester, who was passed over in the election of a new Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Earl of Chester, whose interests Stephen ignored in a settlement with the king of Scots. Finally, in 1139, Stephen made the error of attacking the Bishop of Salisbury and the bishop’s son and nephews—the Bishops of Lincoln and Ely.
This action lost him the support of the Church. Robert of Gloucester took the opportunity to make his formal defiance and revolt against the Crown. The empress landed in England to raise the banners of her cause, and immediately a half dozen other, smaller rebellions broke out.
The pattern for the next fourteen years was quickly set. The empress’s center of support was in the west, with her base at Bristol. She had her supporters and their armies and the occasional help of her husband, the Count of Anjou, who was spending most of his attention and men on the conquest of Normandy. King Stephen controlled London and the east. Along with his feudal levy (under the circumstances not very reliable), he had an army of Flemish mercenaries.
The heaviest fighting took place in the Midlands, along the frontier between the two centers of power. Neither side was strong enough to defeat the other. In their attempts to gain the decisive edge, both the king and the empress rewarded their supporters with lavish grants of power and authority. In 1135, there were seven earls in England. In the eighteen years he was king, Stephen created nineteen more, and the empress appointed eight.
This generosity allowed certain of the barons to fatten at the expense of both rivals. The civil war itself masked the existence of many smaller conflicts fought between baron and baron or baron and people, and in their endless pursuit of each other, the two royals rivals lost their control over local authority and jurisdictions. Therefore, a man like Rannulf, Earl of Chester, would put together a great mass of land—gifts from both king and empress, as well as his family’s holdings—and rule it like a little kingdom.
In recent years it has become fashionable to make light of the Anarchy, and indeed the reports of some of the chroniclers reflect extreme local conditions rather than the condition of the whole kingdom. Yet in some areas the authority of the Crown was forgotten, and order kept by the personal power of local men, or by mere inertia—or order disappeared altogether.
In 1141, the rebellion of the Earl of Chester against King Stephen led to the confrontation at Lincoln, where the king, a model of chivalry if not common sens
e, surrendered the advantage of the terrain so that the battle would start on even terms. He was chivalrously beaten and taken prisoner. At first he was treated well, but soon he was seen bound in chains.
The empress entered London in triumph. Before she was even crowned, her arrogance, plus the fondness of the City of London (whose burgesses were barons) for the king, sent her scurrying for the safety of Winchester. Stephen’s queen, who for the sake of confusion was also named Matilda, led the pursuit with the mercenary army.
They drove the Empress and her friends out of Winchester, and the retreat became a headlong flight. The empress narrowly escaped, and her brother Gloucester was captured.
Exchanged for the king, he left his sister in Oxford and he went to Anjou to ask the help of her husband. The count was conquering Normandy and pressed Gloucester into service there. When he finally got back to England, he found the situation desperate. Stephen had attacked the Empress in Oxford and seized the city and besieged her in the castle. Before Gloucester could rescue her, she escaped in the middle of the night and ran through the ice and winter snow to Wallingford.
Gloucester quickly defeated the rampaging king, who in his turn barely avoided capture, and brought the west of England somewhat under his control again. England lapsed into an unaccustomed calm. A number of the more warlike barons went on Crusade in 1146, draining off some of the fighting zeal, and the country was exhausted. Even when the empress’s fourteen year-old son, Henry, came to England, general enthusiasm could not be mustered. Henry, who had brought along some mercenaries, soon found himself without the money to pay them. He appealed to his cousin Stephen for help, and the king paid off the rioting troops and sent the boy home.
In 1148, Gloucester died and the Empress left England for Anjou. She never returned. King Stephen was left with the problem of bringing under control a number of men and communities that had been ignoring him for years. The great earls were building castles without his permission, making treaties between themselves, fighting private wars and in some cases minting money, all without any regard for the rights and prerogatives of the Crown. The ordinary business of the kingdom—collecting taxes, holding courts of justice—had all but ceased. Through the generosity and ineptitude of the two rivals, some of his own supporters had become a match for the king. Certain towns defied him as well.
While Stephen went about straightening up his kingdom, the decisive action of the civil war was taking place neither on a battlefield not in England. The empress had put her case before the Pope as early as 1138. Under the direction of his brother the Bishop of Winchester, Stephen’s envoys were responding to her charges. The Bishop of Winchester was a Clunaic—a monk of Cluny. That alone made him the enemy of the influential and fanatic monk Saint Bernard of Clairveux. Saint Bernard considered Winchester a compromising, worldly, unreformed, and wicked monk and his brother a usurper.
When a protogee of Bernard was elected Pope in 1144, the tide began to turn toward the Empress. Her case was heard more sympathetically, and, in 1148, King Stephen was excommunicated. Two years later, the Pope refused to allow the Archbishop of Canterbury to anoint Stephen’s son Eustace as heir to England.
In that same year, 1151, the Empress' husband the Count of Anjou died. He left a will that gave Normandy to his elder son, Henry, heir also to his mother’s claim to England.
Henry was not yet twenty, but he had ruled Normandy since his sixteenth birthday and his father had trained him carefully. Only a few months later he doubled his territories by marrying Eleanor, the heiress to Aquitaine, former queen of France. In January of the following year, 1153, Henry invaded England to answer the appeal of the city of Wallingford for aid against King Stephen.
The Earl of Chester came to his support, and the Earl of Leicester quickly joined them. Henry with their help consolidated his position in the west, moved through the Midlands gathering supporters and bringing towns and castles under his control, and laid siege to Tutbury, the seat of the House of Ferrers, earls of Derby. It is here that the story begins.
With the exception of the family of the Earl of Stafford, his attendants, and some minor figures, the characters are drawn from history. The castle, borough, and earldom of Stafford actually belonged to the Earl of Chester. The Earl of Pembroke, Gilbert Fitz Richard de Clare, died in 1148, and there are doubtless other such errors. Readers interested in the period will find A.L. Poole’s From Domesday Book to Magna Carta (Oxford) a good overview of the century and H.A. Cronne’s The Reign of Stephen (London) an interesting closer look at the Anarchy itself. People who like old chronicles will find the Gesta Stephani, now complete, among Nelson’s Medieval Texts. The ballad herein called The Song of the White Ship is, of course, a free version of Sir Patrick Spens.
Preface to a New Edition
This text has been slightly re-edited.
“Oh, where are you going?”
Said the Knight on the road.
“I go to meet my God,”
Said the Child as he stood.
THE EARL
ONE
“Are you awake, my lord?"”
“Yes,” Fulk said. “Light a candle, will you?” He could not remember the name of the page, who was one of Derby’s household. Sitting up in his bed, he put his feet on the floor and stood. In the darkness, a candle began to gleam, shielded by the page’s body. The rustling sound of the rain filled the whole room.
“Send Sir Roger to me,” Fulk said. He took the candle and put it on the table. “Thank you, I’ll dress myself, get Sir Roger.”
The page stepped back and cleared his throat. “Sir Roger— is he the—”
“The tall blond knight who commands my escort.”
“Yes, my lord.” The page dashed off.
Fulk had been sleeping in his shirt. He sat down on the bed and groped for his clothes. The candle lit only a small circle of the floor, showing him his boots and coat; his hose lay half under the bed. He put them on, fumbling in the dark.
“My lord,” Roger said, and came in the door. The page had brought another candle to light his way, and he put it down and came over to help Fulk dress. Roger said, “Are we going to Stafford?”
“Yes,” Fulk said. “At last. Get the men ready. I want to go before my lady wakes up.” Margaret was sick, his excuse for not sleeping with her, and would probably sleep until long after he had gone.
“My lord,” the page said nervously, “my lady Countess is already awake. She says you must eat before you go, and she is waiting for you in the hall.”
“God—” Fulk sat down, and the page bent to put on his boots. Over the boy’s head Fulk and Roger stared at each other. Fulk shook his head. “Damned woman.”
“Shall I order the men to get ready?” Roger said, expressionless.
“Yes.”
Roger went out. Fulk stood, and the page brought him his coat and helped him into it. It was still completely dark outside. He buckled his belt, took his dagger from the floor by the bed and sheathed it, and, with the page and his candle before him, went into the next room.
People still lay sleeping here. The candlelight showed them bundled together in the beds, their feet toward him and their heads lost in the dark. The page held open the door, and Fulk went into the hall.
Except for a table near the hearth, a few benches, and one candle standard, the hall was bare of furnishing, and like a cave it echoed. The rain thundered on the roof overhead and roared along the eaves. Fulk’s wife and the Earl of Derby were sitting at the table, eating by the light of the fire and six candles. Fulk crossed the hall toward them and sat down on the bench opposite Margaret.
“Good morning,” Derby said, beside Margaret. “Did you sleep well?”
“Morning,” Fulk said. “It’s the middle of the night. What are you doing out of bed, my lady? I thought you were sick.”
A page set a dish of cold meat down in front of him, and he drew his dagger to cut it.
“I am,” Margaret said placidly. She was tall for a w
oman, shapeless with fat, her wide, clear gray eyes almost lost in her round face. She had a cold; her nose shone red as a holly berry, and her voice was hoarse. “I would be a poor wife, would I not, if I let you go away without a farewell?”
Derby said, “Surely you don’t want to go now anyway, Fulk. Not in the rain.”
Fulk gave him a sideways look, and Derby went quickly back to his cold roast chicken. Margaret said, “I cannot see the need to go to Stafford at all, my lord.”
“A dangerous outlaw has seized my castle, the seat of my family,” Fulk said. “I suppose you wish me to—”
“You choose to interpret it that way,” she said. A servant brought up a plate laden with warm bread; Fulk took a loaf the size of his hand and split it lengthwise. Margaret said, “I am sure you are needed more at Tutbury than at Stafford, my lord. You neglect your prince, going to Stafford.”
Fulk chewed a mouthful of bread, swallowed it, and reached for the wine. If she could, she would keep him here arguing all day long. He had intended to go the morning before, but suddenly she had arrived, started a fight, and kept it up until he had to stay another day. “I’m not going to argue with you,” he said.
Derby said uneasily, “I have to be back in Tutbury, anyway, of course. My lady, let me offer you a cake.” He gave the page a bit of simnel cake spread with red jam, and the boy carried it the three steps to Margaret.
She accepted it absently, her eyes on Fulk. He made himself busy with his food. Servants moved around the table, on the edge of the light, taking away plates and bringing others. Fulk knew that Margaret was wondering why he and Derby were meeting here, a day’s ride from Derby’s own castle of Tutbury, when Tutbury lay under siege by the army which Fulk in part commanded. He took a sip of light wine, rolled it around his mouth, and spat it onto the floor.
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