The election of Stephen by London is a fact the full importance of which, in the history of the City, was first brought out by the late J. R. Green. This importance signified, in fact, a great deal more than the election of a king by the City of London, a thing by no means new in the history of the City. First, we know that many Normans flocked over to London after the Conquest. Normans there were before that event, but their numbers rapidly increased in consequence. By this time we see that the immigrants no longer considered themselves Normans only, but Londoners as well. William’s Charter especially recognises and provides for this fusion when he “greets all the burgesses in London, Frenchmen and Englishmen, friendly.” The Normans were his subjects as well as the English: they were not, therefore, aliens in his English cities. For instance, Gilbert Becket, father of the Archbishop, was by birth a burgher of Rouen, and his wife was the daughter of a burgher of Caen. But his son Thomas was always an Englishman. The Normans in London, therefore, took their part without question in the election of a king of England. And they elected Stephen rather than Henry, the son of the Empress, because Henry was also the son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, and the hatred of Norman for Angevin was greater even than the hatred of Welshman for Englishman. It survived the immigration of the Norman into England; it found expression when King Henry died, and when his stepson Geoffrey of Anjou seemed likely to claim the throne of England, as he claimed the duchy of Normandy, in right of his wife. In Normandy, however, the people rose as one man, and chased him out of the dukedom. In London, the City seems to have assumed the power of electing the King of England, as in the case of Henry, and without consulting bishop, abbot, or noble, did elect Stephen, the nephew of King Henry, and crowned him in Westminster. There were, in fact, two forces working for Stephen. The first was this said Norman jealousy of Anjou. The second was perhaps stronger. The religious revival of which we spoke as belonging to the reign of Henry, was spreading over the whole of western Europe. Green calls it the first of the great religious movements which England was to experience. He seems to forget, however, that there was a much earlier religious movement, which filled the monasteries and weakened the country, by draining it of fighting-men, in the eighth century.
“Everywhere in town and country men banded themselves together for prayer, hermits flocked to the woods, noble and churl welcomed the austere Cistercians as they spread over the moors and forests of the North. A new spirit of enthusiastic devotion woke the slumber of the older orders, and penetrated alike to the home of the noble Walter d’Espec at Rievaulx, or of the trader Gilbert Becket in Cheapside. It is easy to be blinded in revolutionary times, such as those of Stephen, by the superficial aspects of the day; but, amidst the wars of the Succession, and the clash of arms, the real thought of England was busy with deeper things. We see the force of the movement in the new class of ecclesiastics that it forces on the stage. The worldliness that had been no scandal in Roger of Salisbury becomes a scandal in Henry of Winchester. The new men, Thurstan, and Ailred, and Theobald, and John of Salisbury—even Thomas himself—derive whatever weight they possess from sheer holiness of life or aim.”—Historical Studies.
The outward sign of this movement was the foundation of many religious houses, and the building of many churches. The number and importance of the foundations created in or about London, not taking into account those founded in the country, within a space of about twenty years, indicate in themselves a widespread, deep-rooted, religious feeling. It was an age of fervent faith; Stephen himself, rough soldier that he was, felt its influence.
Now this religious fervour was openly scorned and scoffed at and derided by the Angevins. Contempt for religion was hereditary with them. From father to son they gloried in deriding holy things. In the words of Green: “A lurid grandeur of evil, a cynical defiance of religious opinion, hung alike round Fulc Nerra, or Fulc Rechin, or Geoffrey Plantagenet. The murder of a priest by Henry Fitz-Empress, the brutal sarcasms of Richard, the embassy of John to the Moslems of Spain, were but the continuance of a series of outrages on the religious feelings of the age which had begun long ere the lords of Anjou became Kings of England.”
To the reasons why the City had taken upon itself to elect and to crown Stephen, viz. the Norman hatred of Anjou, and resentment against the man of no religion, must be added two more: the conviction that a strong armed man, and not a woman, was wanted for the country; and a general restlessness which, the moment the old king was dead, broke out everywhere in acts of lawlessness and robbery.
It was not yet a time when peace was possible, save at intervals; the barons and their following must needs be fighting, if not with the common enemy, then with each other. The burghers of London, as well as the barons, felt frequent attacks of those inward prickings which caused the fingers to close round the hilt and to draw the sword. Historians have not, perhaps, attached enough importance to the mediæval—is it only mediæval?—yearning for a fight. There is nothing said about it in any of the Chronicles, yet one recognises its recurrence. One feels it in the air. Only a strong king could keep down the fighting spirit, or make it find satisfaction and outlet in local brawls.
Never in this country, before or after, was there such an opportunity for gratifying this passion to be up and cutting throats. Historians, who were ecclesiastics, and therefore able to feel for and speak of the sufferings of the people, write of the horrors of war. The fighting-men themselves felt none of the horrors. Though the country-people starved, the men of war were well fed; though merchants were robbed and murdered, the men of war were not hanged for the crime; to die on the battlefield, even to die lingering with horrible wounds, had no terrors for these soldiers; nay, this kind of death seemed to them a far nobler lot than to die in a peaceful bed like a burgher. Dead bodies lay in heaps where there had been a village—dead bodies of men, women, and children, which corrupted the air. The shrieks of tortured men rang from the castles, and the despairing cries of outraged maidens from the farmhouse. The towns were laid in ruins, the cultivated lands were laid desolate, the country was deserted by the people, yet these things were not horrors to the men of war, they were daily sights. For nearly twenty years the battlefield was the universal death-bed of the Englishman; and since harvests were burned, cattle destroyed, rustics murdered, priests and merchants robbed, one wonders how, at the end of it, any one at all was left alive in England. As for the City of London, it paid dearly for the choice of a king; and in the long run it had to see the other side, the House of Anjou, come to reign over its people.
Henry died on the 1st of December 1135. Twenty-four days afterwards, Stephen received the crown from the hands of the Archbishop. During the interval the country had become, suddenly, a seething mass of anarchy and violence. A strong hand had held it down for more than thirty years—a period, one would think, long enough for a spirit of obedience to law and order to grow up in men’s minds. Not yet: the only obedience was that due to fear; the only respect for law was that inspired by the hardest and most inflexible of kings. The words used by the author of the Gesta Stephani were doubtless much exaggerated, but they point to an outbreak of lawlessness which was certainly made possible by the removal of Henry’s mailed hand.
“Seized with a new fury, they began to run riot against each other; and the more a man injured the innocent, the higher he thought of himself. The sanctions of the law, which form the restraint of a rude population, were totally disregarded and set at naught; and men, giving the reins to all iniquity, plunged without hesitation into whatever crimes their inclinations prompted.... The people also turned to plundering each other without mercy, contriving schemes of craft and bloodshed against their neighbours; as it was said by the prophet, ‘Man rose up without mercy against man, and every one was set against his neighbour.’ For whatever the evil passions suggested in peaceable times, now that the opportunity of vengeance presented itself, was quickly executed. Secret grudgings burst forth, and dissembled malice was brought to light and openly avowed.” (Henry of Huntingdon.)
Then Stephen, crossing over from Ouissant (Ushant) with a fair wind, landed at Dover, and made haste to march to London, where he counted upon finding friends. His succession, indeed, was no new thing suddenly proposed; there had been grave discussions, prompted by the considerations above detailed, as to adopting Stephen as the successor. In addition to his reputation as a soldier, Stephen possessed the charm of personal attraction and generosity.
The City, however, as in the case of William the Conqueror and his son Henry, elected Stephen king after a solemn Covenant that, “So long as he lived, the citizens should aid him by their wealth and support him by their arms, and that he should bend all his energies to the pacification of the kingdom.”
Round (see below) discusses this covenant and the assertion in the Gesta that the Londoners claimed the right of electing the king. He compares the oath taken by king or overlord at certain towns in France, such as Bazas in Aquitaine, Issigeac in the Perigord, Bourg sur Mer in Gascony, and Bayonne. At all these places the oath was practically in the same form: the citizens swore obedience and fidelity to the king, while the king in return swore to be a good lord over them, to respect and preserve their customs, and to guard them from all injury. This oath was, in fact, William the Conqueror’s Charter. It was probably neither more nor less than this which the citizens of London exacted from Stephen. Six years later it was the same oath which they exacted from the Empress. Now, as the French towns referred to did not speak or act in the name of the whole kingdom or the province, may not the action of London in 1135 have been, not so much to assert their right to elect the king, as their resolution to make their recognition of a successor to the throne, when the succession was disputed, the subject of a separate negotiation?