by Lisa Hilton
Support for the Empress among the barons now began to decline. A general proposition for their disenchantment has been termed ‘neutralism’, meaning that the self-interest of the magnates was no longer felt to be secure with the Empress and that they thought it wiser simply to withdraw. They had not come to her side out of chivalry, and they were not gallant now ‘Matilda had shown at the height of her power that she had neither the political judgement nor the understanding of men to enable her to act wisely in a crisis.’15 The Empress was also dealing with a cunning politician in Matilda of Boulogne. To recover the loyalty of Geoffrey de Mandeville, Matilda granted him a charter at Canterbury, promising that he could retain the advantages bestowed on him by the Empress if he returned to the King’s side. Although Queen Matilda was an experienced diplomat who had commanded military campaigns, she was always careful to present herself as a supplicant: a mother seeking justice for her son, a loving wife concerned for her husband. She was conciliatory where the Empress was harsh, and she knew that a display of apparent weakness could count as a strength. As she sat beside him in her gold crown at their Christmas court at Canterbury, Stephen had every reason to be grateful for the intelligence and fortitude of his wife.
The King relied even more heavily on Matilda early in the next year, 1142. Although the Empress’s hopes had received a serious setback, the uprisings continued. Stephen and Matilda made a progress to York, where they were reconciled with Ranulf of Chester, but the King was ill throughout much of the spring and summer, suffering from lassitude and depression. A great army was mustered at York and then had to be sent home again because the King was too listless to determine how they should advance. Faced with her husband’s debilitation, Matilda became more active than ever. She travelled alone across the Channel and on 23 June held a court at Lens, in her county of Boulogne, in an attempt to raise funds and men. By the autumn, Stephen had recovered sufficiently to besiege Oxford, where the Empress was staying. He was no longer in a position to be gentlemanly, as he had been at Arundel three years before. The siege continued until December but the Empress made yet another escape, creeping out of the wintry city in a white cloak, invisible against the snow, and making her way to Abingdon accompanied by just a handful of knights. The Empress Matilda may have had unappealing manners, but she was gloriously brave.
From 1141 to 1147, Matilda of Boulogne based herself mainly in London. Her presence was important in retaining the loyalty of the city, and she was conveniently close to Dover to ensure that the crucial communications between Dover and Wissant remained accessible. During this period, 56 per cent of Matilda’s attested and independent charters were made within forty miles of London and none more than eighty miles away. While Stephen trailed from siege to siege, Matilda supervised government business, and it has been judged probable that she was also responsible for the collection of revenues at the Westminster exchequer.
Oxford had surrendered after the Empress’s escape, but still the war dragged on. The next summer Stephen was defeated at Wilton by Earl Robert, who now controlled the territory to the west of Winchester. In Normandy, the King’s imprisonment after Lincoln had prompted the magnates to seek terms with the Empress’s husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, who was still pushing her cause along the duchy’s borders. Geoffrey campaigned stolidly in Normandy every year, and in 1144 he took Rouen and had himself invested as duke in April. The loss of Normandy was a bitter blow, and the only comfort Stephen could take from it was that gradually, the barons on both sides were losing interest in the fight for England.
Historians have suggested two dates, 1148 and 1150, as the beginning of the ‘magnates’ peace’, but Earl Robert’s death in October 1147 lends support to the earlier year, as his demise marked the collapse of even nominal party adherence. One by one, the lords simply gave up fighting. The Empress lingered on for four months with her small garrison at Devizes, where she had fled after her escape from Oxford, but early in 1148 she was back in Normandy. So irrelevant had she become by now that only one source mentions her departure. Gervase of Canterbury’s clerk reported approvingly that she had returned, a humbled wife, ‘to the haven of her husband’s protection’.
The careers of Matilda of Boulogne and the Empress Matilda had mirrored each other in many ways. Both women now chose to retreat from active politics and, following the example of their mothers, Matilda and Mary of Scotland, in the tradition of pious female royalty, they elected to live apart from their husbands and to embrace religious seclusion. The Empress opted for the priory of Nôtre-Dame-du-Pré, outside Rouen, for her retirement; after 1147 Matilda of Boulogne lived mainly in Canterbury at the monastery of St Augustine. It seems that Matilda had long felt the call of the contemplative life. As early as 1141, during the negotiations for Stephen’s release, she had proposed an unusual solution: that Stephen might emulate her own father and retire to a monastery, in which case she could have decided to do likewise. Alternatively, Matilda suggested, the King could live as a sort of permanent pilgrim in the Holy Land, where she could have accompanied him. Her interest in crusading and the Templars made this an attractive idea, though it was never pursued, and Matilda settled for a less adventurous manner of drawing closer to God.
In spite of her decision to devote herself to the Church, Matilda remained busy. Some indication of her social character can be inferred from the fact that she complained of the boredom of living among the monks, who observed a rule of silence. One occupation was the supervision of the building of Faversham Abbey, seven miles west of the priory, which Stephen founded in 1147 as a dynastic monument to the house of Blois. Faversham had had royal associations since the fifth century, and a lodging house, the Maison Dieu, was built in the twelfth century for the use of royal travellers as they passed between London, Dover and Canterbury. Few buildings remain at Faversham, and those that survive are of a later date, but excavations have shown that the church, dominated by a massive central tower, was of the impressive proportions typical of Norman architecture, its nave measuring 370 feet by eighty. Faversham never achieved the prestige Stephen planned for it, any more than did his own dynasty, but Matilda, her husband and their eldest son Eustace were all eventually buried there.
Until the end of her life, Matilda was never able entirely to ignore the demands of her position as queen. Although the Empress had left England, the pursuit of the succession had passed to the next generation, in the person of her son Henry Plantagenet, known as Henry FitzEmpress, the future King Henry II. While the marriage between the Empress and Geoffrey of Anjou was emotionally distant, with neither seeming interested in the other’s company beyond the requirements of duty, as a business partnership it was a success. The Empress offered Geoffrey the opportunity to consolidate and expand his Continental holdings and he supported her fully in Normandy. The couple had three sons, Henry, born at Le Mans in 1133, Geoffrey (1134) and William (1136), but did not live together after 1138. Henry was associated early with his mother’s claims. Between the Westminster rout and the defeat at Winchester, when she was attempting to consolidate support among the barons, she offered lands not only in England but also Normandy in exchange for their loyalty, and a charter of 1141 to Aubrey de Vere begins: ‘Henry, son of the daughter of King Henry, rightful heir of England and Normandy …’ Henry was seven when his mother sailed for England to make good her rights, and in 1142 he was brought over to join her, his presence a meaningful instrument in her campaign in that it demonstrated that should she achieve the crown, the succession was assured. When his father obtained the dukedom of Normandy in 1144, Henry returned to the duchy, where he remained until 1147. In March of that year, on his own initiative, the fourteen-year-old gathered a small party of knights and set off for England to fight for his mother, but his gallant gesture ended in embarrassment as he was forced to appeal unsuccessfully to both the Empress and Robert of Gloucester for funds. In the end, it was his uncle Stephen who, instead of imprisoning him, kindly bailed him out and he went back to Normandy in di
sgrace.
The Empress, her husband and three sons met at Rouen in 1148 to decide the next step in the Angevin strategy. If Henry wanted to make good his own claim after the Empress’s return to Normandy, he would have to deal with the problem of the rival heir, Stephen’s son Eustace. Eustace’s parents had begun to lobby for their son’s rights to be recognised. In 1147, when he was twenty-one, Stephen knighted him, and with Matilda’s consent he was given possession of the honour and county of Boulogne. Eustace himself was insecure about his title to the kingdom, which may have been a consequence of his mother’s request to the Empress at Westminster in 1140 that he should be granted at least Stephen’s Continental holdings, implying that his inheritance was less than assured. In any event, when Henry arrived in England in spring 1149, Eustace took it as a personal challenge. One commentator, John of Hexham, noted that their personal rivalry was so intense that they seemed to be fighting a duel for the kingdom.
Henry FitzEmpress held his first English court at Devizes, which was still pro-Angevin, on 13 April. Presumably to Eustace’s dismay, the Stephenite Gesta described Henry as the ‘true heir’. The Gesta author was reflecting the mood of the country, which was increasingly inclined to the view that the Angevins would prevail. From Devizes, Henry moved to the court of his great-uncle, David of Scotland, at Carlisle, where, in the presence of a number of significant magnates, he was knighted. This may have been intended as a symbolic gesture, rather than as a declaration of war, but during Henry’s return journey from Carlisle, Stephen ordered Eustace to garrison Oxford, and the two young men fought a campaign of skirmishes in the southwest. Eustace attempted to capture Devizes, and almost succeeded in taking Henry prisoner at Dursley, but Henry eluded him and managed to escape to Normandy in January 1150.
In response to the confrontation between Henry and Eustace, Stephen and Matilda took steps to have Eustace crowned in his father’s lifetime, a custom which was unfamiliar in the England of that period, but which had precedents among the Anglo-Saxon kings and also in the Capet dynasty in France. Indeed, it was a policy that Henry II was to enact with his own son. It required the consent of Theobald, the archbishop of Canterbury, with whom the royal couple had until recently enjoyed good relations. Stephen had appointed Theobald to the see in 1138, in preference to his own brother Bishop Henry, and in 1147 Theobald had personally selected the Queen’s confessor, prior Ralph of Holy Trinity Aldgate. In 1149, though, Theobald refused to consent to Eustace’s coronation. His direction came from the papal curia, which had changed its policy towards Stephen’s rule since 1136, when the King had received a vital gesture of support from Innocent II that effectively confirmed his right to the crown. The papacy had also been supportive when the Empress’s adherents had tried to contest his claim at the Lateran Council of 1139. But Innocent’s successors, Celestine and Eugenius, took a more neutral line. The official reasoning was that the curia accepted Stephen as de facto king, but did not necessarily recognise him as the rightful ruler. Eustace’s coronation, establishing his right to inheritance, would contradict this piece of careful casuistry. Theobald had already displeased Stephen by attending a papal council at Reims the previous year against the King’s express wishes and had been exiled for a while. Eugenius III had placed England under interdict, though Matilda still succeeded in hearing Mass at Canterbury, and she interceded with her husband for the archbishop, who lodged at the abbey of St Bertin outside Boulogne during his exile.
Matilda was particularly keen to see Eustace crowned, and after Theobald refused to be swayed she involved herself in the disputed election to the archbishopric of York. Stephen and the Pope had disagreed for some years over the installation to York of the papal candidate, Henry Murdac. The distinguished French cleric Bernard of Clairvaux had twice written to Matilda to ask for her intervention in the matter, the level of authority the Queen had achieved being shown in his reference to ‘the glory of your kingdom’, which acknowledged her as an equal partner with her husband. In order to mollify the Pope, Matilda persuaded Stephen to accept Murdac, who, in return, undertook to plead Eustace’s cause. According to John of Hexham, he achieved some limited success at the Curia in 1151, but much of the energy behind the plan had been Matilda’s, and when she died, it died with her. In the case of her second son, William, it does not appear even to have been considered.
Matilda’s last diplomatic mission took place in Flanders in 1150. Now that Louis VII, and his Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, were returned from crusade, Stephen sought to renew their anti-Angevin pact, and Bishop Henry visited Paris as an ambassador on his way to Rome. Matilda accompanied him as far as the border of Flanders, and the alliance was proposed, though an unusually bitter winter prevented a campaign from being fought. Matilda’s visit proved fruitful the next year, when Louis attacked Normandy from the north. However, the French king fell ill and the combined push against the Angevins collapsed when Geoffrey of Anjou and Henry FitzEmpress agreed a truce with France in 1151. Stephen held a great council in London at Easter 1152, which Matilda attended to try to rally support. The magnates were persuaded to swear an oath to Eustace, but both the King and the Queen knew how much that was worth. Increasingly, it seemed that only Henry FitzEmpress could unite the weary country.
Matilda was spared the inevitable collapse of her hopes for her husband and son when she died, at Headingham Castle on 3 May 1152, while on a visit to her friend and former lady-in-waiting Euphemia, Countess of Oxford. It was obvious that the Queen’s illness was fatal, but there was just enough time to summon her confessor, the prior of Holy Trinity Aldgate, who administered the last rites, and Stephen himself, who confirmed a grant to Holy Trinity on her behalf from Headingham. Matilda’s body was transported in state to London, then on to Faversham. Hers was the first royal burial at the abbey she and Stephen had hoped would celebrate the founding of a new English royal dynasty. She was joined there the next year by Eustace, who died of a seizure — some said brought on by rage — in August 1153.
King Stephen and Henry FitzEmpress met at Winchester on 6 November 1153. Henry paid homage to Stephen and was designated his heir. William of Boulogne, Matilda’s second son, paid homage to Henry who swore to provide for him honourably. (Mary, the surviving royal daughter, had not married: she became a nun at St Sulpice, Rennes.) Stephen and Henry then travelled together to Westminster, where they were received by rapturous crowds who could hardly believe that peace had descended at last. The two enemies kept Christmas together, then travelled to Oxford, Dunstable, St Albans, London and Canterbury, where they heard Mass. Every stage of their journey was marked by public celebration and as much magnificence as Stephen’s drained resources could muster. In March Henry returned to Normandy. All he had to do now was wait for Stephen to die.
Perhaps it is not going too far to suggest that Stephen’s acquiescence in bestowing the kingdom on Henry was in some way related to his wife’s death. He was susceptible to depression, as his illness ten years before had shown, and ‘what Stephen could not replace was the Queen’s steadfastness of purpose and steady judgement’.16 Politically, there were sound and complex reasons why the Winchester agreement made sense, but after Matilda’s death and the shocking loss of Eustace, Stephen no longer had the emotional resources or purpose to go on struggling. He did not display any bitterness, and outwardly remained cheerful and active, but he was exhausted and grieving, and in October 1153 he began to suffer from a disease of the bowel and internal bleeding. He died at Dover on 25 October, attended by Prior Ralph and Archbishop Theobald, and was laid to rest with his wife and son at Faversham.
In many ways, Matilda of Boulogne was a model consort. As a regent, diplomat, warrior, counsellor and mother, she occupies a position alongside with her predecessors Matilda of Scotland and Matilda of Flanders at the apogee of English queenship, after which many historians concur that the power invested in the office began to decline. Yet she also lived in a period where writers were beginning to reconfigure their attitudes to feminin
e authority.
Anglo-Saxon commentators generally accept that women could participate in war and government, betraying ‘not the slightest surprise … when a woman is learned, devout, an able administrator or a brave fighter’.17 Matilda of Boulogne was all of these things. However, post-Conquest attitudes to gender shift to a point at which any sign of such capabilities in remarked upon with astonishment and viewed as exceptional. ‘Masculinity’, in terms of categorising the characteristics of women, becomes amorphous. In one sense it can be positive, in that if a woman does anything so unusual as to suggest she might have a brain it must be because she possesses ‘manlike’ qualities, but in another it can be negative, disturbing, unqueenly. The Empress Matilda found herself damned in the chronicles on both counts. Henry of Huntingdon reduces her brilliant escape from the siege of Oxford to ‘a woman’s trick’, while William of Newburgh condemns her ‘intolerable feminine arrogance’ — intolerable, that is, in a woman. The Gesta author claims that she ‘unsexed’ herself: ‘She began immediately to assume the loftiest haughtiness of the greatest arrogance — not now the humble gait of feminine docility, but she began to walk and talk more severely and more arrogantly than was customary, and to do everything herself.’ Comportment that was acceptable, even demanded, in a powerful man, but derided in a woman.
What Matilda of Boulogne achieved was a means of regulating her conduct in comparison with her rival’s in a way that successfully manipulated the new, post-Conquest model of queenly femininity. The Gesta describes her as ‘astuti pectoris virilisque constantiae femina’ — having the virile, courageous breast of a man, but the constancy or fortitude of a woman. Like the Empress, her courage made her ‘manlike’, but her conduct was tempered by an acceptable level of conventional femininity. It is interesting to speculate what might have become of England’s first putative queen regnant had she been possessed of Matilda of Boulogne’s diplomatic feminine modesty during those tense days at Westminster. Neither the Empress nor Matilda succeeded in their ambitions, and Matilda’s husband is one of the great, if misunderstood, failures of English kingship. Matilda herself, though, was never anything less than a great queen.
