One sees in this story how instinctively the religious reformers of the day went to Cîteaux for a model and a guide; and one sees, too, how little the Cistercians were as yet inclined to abuse their influence by reaping where they had not sown. The extraordinary position of Bernard himself was not of his own seeking; the “care of all the churches” came upon him whether he would or not; as one of his biographers expresses it, all Christendom looked upon him as a divinely-appointed Moses of whom the ordained hierarchy and even the supreme pontiff himself were but subordinate mouthpieces and representatives.[1041] Like their prototype in the Old Testament, the Aarons of the time did not always understand the policy or appreciate the aims of their inspired brother, and the spiritual party in the Church sometimes found its worst stumbling-block within the walls of the Lateran. Year by year, however, its influence grew and spread, till on the death of Pope Lucius II. in February 1145 a Cistercian, Bernard abbot of S. Anastasius at Rome, was raised to the chair of S. Peter by the name of Eugene III. With him the anti-Bernardine party had no chance of a moment’s hearing; threats, flatteries or bribes were all alike thrown away upon a pontiff whose glory and whose strength lay in having no will of his own, in being simply the voice which proclaimed and the hand which executed the thoughts of his greater namesake at Clairvaux. “They say I am Pope, not you!” wrote S. Bernard to him,[1042] half playfully, half in gentle reproach, and Eugene gloried in the saying. A new departure in the policy of the Roman see was marked by the fulfilment of one of Bernard’s most cherished schemes, the preaching of a new crusade for the deliverance of the Holy Land, whence an imploring cry for help came from the widowed Queen Melisenda—for King Fulk of Anjou had been cut off suddenly in the midst of his labours, and his realm, left to the rule of a woman and a child, was rapidly falling a prey to the Infidels.[1043] At Vézelay, on Easter-day 1146, the young King Louis of France took the cross from S. Bernard’s own hands amid a scene of the wildest enthusiasm. The Emperor Conrad soon followed his example, and at Pentecost 1147 the expedition set out.

As far as its direct object was concerned, this second crusade failed completely; yet it had not been projected in vain. As said a friend and biographer of S. Bernard: “If it was God’s will thereby to deliver, not the bodies of many eastern folk from the bondage of the heathen, but the souls of many western folk from the bondage of sin, who shall dare to ask why He has thus done?”[1044] If the movement did nothing for Palestine, it did something for England. Torn and exhausted with her internal divisions, she could take no part in it as a state; but nowhere was it more readily joined by individual volunteers. The preaching of the Crusade was a spark which kindled into flame, in the heart of more than one of the troublers of the land, the smouldering embers of a capacity for better things; it was a trumpet-call which roused more than one brave knight to forsake the miserable party-strife with which perhaps in his secret soul he had long been growing disgusted, and fling into a better cause the energies which he had been wasting upon his country’s ruin.[1045] But the movement did more for England than this. It brought to light among the English people a spirit whose existence at such a time could otherwise hardly have been suspected. The one success of the Crusade was achieved by a little independent squadron of one hundred and sixty-four ships which sailed from Dartmouth on May 23, six days before the feast of the Ascension, 1147. The expedition consisted of Germans, Flemings and Englishmen, the latter being the most numerous. Nearly all were men of low degree; they had no commander-in-chief; each nationality chose its own leader. The “men of the Empire”—a body of Low-Germans who, for some unknown reason, chose to be independent of the great Imperial host—followed Count Arnold of Aerschot, who seems to have been the only person of rank in the whole assemblage; the Flemings and the men of Queen Matilda’s county of Boulogne were led by Christian of Gistelles. The English grouped themselves according to the districts of their birth under the guidance of four marshals; Hervey of Glanville led the men of Norfolk and Suffolk; Simon of Dover[1046] commanded the ships of Kent; a man named Andrew was chief of the Londoners; and a miscellaneous contingent from other parts of the country was headed by Saher de Arcelles. The whole company bound themselves by vows almost as stringent as those of a religious order; they were pledged to eschew all fine clothes and personal indulgences, and to help and avenge one another in all things as sworn brethren; each ship had its own chaplain and its regular services, as if it were a parish; every man confessed and communicated once a week; and for the enforcement of all these rules two men were elected out of every thousand to form a body of sworn judges[1047] who should administer the common funds and assist the marshals in maintaining order. These warrior-pilgrims, sailing down the western coast of the Spanish peninsula on their way to the Mediterranean Sea, touched at Oporto; at the entreaty of the Portuguese King Alfonso and his people they exchanged their intended crusade in Holy Land for one which was perhaps more useful—a campaign for the deliverance of Christian Portugal from its Moorish oppressors. The Moors who occupied Lisbon were starved into surrender by a four months’ blockade; the crusaders entered the city in triumph; in the hour of temptation English discipline proved strong enough to control German greed,[1048] and renouncing all share in the fruit of their victory these single-hearted soldiers of the Cross made over the future capital of Portugal to its Christian sovereign and went home rejoicing that they, a few poor men of lowly birth and no reputation, had been counted worthy to strike a successful blow for the Faith, while its royal and imperial champions at the head of their countless hosts met with nothing but disaster and disgrace.[1049]

There was no need to despair of a country whose middle and lower classes could still produce men capable of an exploit such as this. When a spontaneous gathering of poor yeomen, common sailors and obscure citizens could reveal such a spirit, it was plain that all England wanted to rescue her from her misery was a competent leader. S. Bernard, watching over the fortunes of the English Church through the eyes of his brethren at Fountains and Rievaux, had seen this already; and he saw, too, that it was vain to look for such a leader in either the king or the king-maker, Henry of Winchester. Before the Church of England could rescue the state, she must be freed from the political entanglements into which she had been dragged by Henry’s impetuosity, and enabled to resume a position of spiritual independence under her rightful leader, the archbishop of Canterbury. With this view the whole Cistercian order in England, supported and directed by S. Bernard, had set their faces against William Fitz-Herbert’s appointment to the see of York, as an attempt of king and legate to override the constitutional rights of the southern primate and of the Church as a whole. “The bishop of Winchester and the archbishop of York do not walk in the same spirit with the archbishop of Canterbury, but go their own way in opposition to him; and this comes from the old quarrel about the legation”—thus Bernard summed up the case.[1050] Moreover the saving clause whereby William of Durham was allowed to swear by proxy in behalf of his namesake appears to have been interpolated by the latter’s friends into the Papal decree; for “One William has not sworn, yet the other is archbishop”[1051] was the burthen of S. Bernard’s cry to the Pope; and when in 1144 a cardinal-legate, Hicmar, came to England with a pall for William of York, he promised Bernard not to give it till he should have received the oath from the bishop of Durham in person.[1052]

Neither prelate took any notice of Hicmar’s presence; but when he was recalled by the death of Pope Lucius and the accession of Eugene, the archbishop of York suddenly perceived what a blunder he had made, and hurried to Rome in quest of the pall about which he had hitherto been so indifferent. Instead of giving it, Eugene suspended him from all episcopal functions till such time as William of Durham should have taken the oath required by the sentence of Pope Innocent. The archbishop hereupon retired to Sicily and took up his abode there with his fellow-countryman the chancellor, Robert of Selby or Salisbury,[1053] under the protection of King Roger. As Roger was then at bitter feud with the Church, this step was not likely to mend William’s ecclesiastical reputation. His cause, bad from the first and made worse by his own carelessness, was presently ruined by his friends. The leaders of the opposition to him in England were the abbots of Rievaux and Fountains; the latter, Henry Murdac, was a native of Yorkshire who in Archbishop Thurstan’s time had given up houses and lands, home and kindred, to go out to Clairvaux at the call of S. Bernard. In 1135 he was sent thence to found the abbey of Vauclair;[1054] in 1143 he was appointed to succeed Abbot Richard II. of Fountains, who had died at Clairvaux while on his way to attend the general chapter of his order at Cîteaux.[1055] Henry Murdac went back to his native land charged with an implied commission to make Fountains an English Clairvaux and himself an English representative of S. Bernard, and he fulfilled his charge with true Cistercian zeal and fidelity.[1056] As soon as William’s suspension became known, his friends attributed it to the influence of Murdac, whom they sought to punish by making an armed raid upon his abbey. Plunder, of course, they got little or none in a freshly-reformed Cistercian house;[1057] so, after a hurried and unsuccessful search for Murdac himself, they set the place on fire. Every stone of it perished except the church, which escaped as by miracle; and the abbot escaped with it, for he had been lying all the while, unnoticed by the passion-blinded eyes of his foes, prostrate in prayer before the high altar. The energy of the monks and the sympathy of their neighbours soon enabled Fountains to rise from its ashes more glorious than before;[1058] but William’s day of grace was at once brought to a close by this outrage. At a council held in Paris in the spring of 1147, the abbot of Fountains and a deputation from the chapter of York once more formally presented to the Pope their charges against their primate, and Eugene deposed William from his episcopal office.[1059] On the eve of S. James the chapter of York, with the two suffragan bishops of the province—Durham and Carlisle—met in obedience to a papal mandate for the election of a new archbishop. The choice of the majority fell upon Henry Murdac. From Clairvaux, whither he had gone after the council, the abbot of Fountains was summoned to the papal court at Trier, and there, on the octave of S. Andrew, he received his consecration and his pall both at once from Pope Eugene’s own hand.[1060]

The subsequent conduct of Stephen and Henry of Winchester proved that their aim in securing the occupation of the northern primacy had been rightly understood by Eugene and Bernard. They had staked everything upon the success of their scheme, and when it failed not only the king but even the once cool and sagacious bishop completely lost his head. Upon William himself the papal sentence had the very opposite effect; it woke him from his dreams of easy dignity and worldly pride; from that moment the idle, showy, self-indulgent young ecclesiastic changed into an humble saint, and when he came home next year it was not to renew the strife but to turn away from the world and possess his soul in patience.[1061] But his uncles would not hear of submission; Henry took him to live in his own house, and there persisted in ostentatiously treating him with all the honours due to the archbishop of York;[1062] and when in the summer of 1148 the new archbishop also came back to England, Stephen demanded sworn security for his fidelity before he would let him set foot in the country.[1063] The citizens of York, instigated by the treasurer of the see, Hugh of Puiset, who like William was a nephew of the king, shut their gates in their primate’s face; he withdrew to Ripon, laid his diocese under interdict and excommunicated Hugh; but Hugh, strong in the support of his uncles, defied the interdict and was even impudent enough to return the excommunication.[1064]

In the southern province matters had come to a still more dangerous crisis. Early in 1148 all the English bishops were summoned by the Pope to a council which was to meet at Reims on Mid-Lent Sunday. Three of them—Hereford, Chichester and Norwich—were sent by Stephen himself; but when the archbishop of Canterbury made the usual application for leave to quit the country, the king refused, set a watch at every port to stop his egress, and at his brother Henry’s instigation swore that if Theobald did go he should be banished on his return. Theobald however had made up his mind to go at any cost; he slipped away in an old broken boat with only two companions—Roger of Pont-l’Evêque and Thomas of London, the latter of whom had now been for several years the most trusted medium of intercommunication between the primate and the court of Rome. The daring voyagers reached their journey’s end in safety, and Theobald was triumphantly presented to the council by the Pope as one who had swum rather than sailed across the Channel for the sake of his duty to the Church.[1065] The bishops who had failed to attend were all suspended, Henry of Winchester being specially mentioned by name. His brother, however,—the good count of Blois who seems to have been at once the scapegoat and the peacemaker for all the sins of his family, and who was held in the deepest esteem by both Eugene and Bernard—made intercession on his behalf, and obtained a relaxation of the sentence against him on condition of his coming to Rome within six months.[1066] As for the king, Eugene would have excommunicated him at once; but for him the other Theobald stepped forward as mediator, like Anselm in a somewhat similar case, and procured him a respite of three months.[1067] The intercessor’s reward was the threatened sentence of banishment, issued as soon as he returned to Canterbury. He withdrew into France and appealed to the Pope, while Stephen seized the temporalities of the see and began playing the part of the Red King on a small scale. Eugene wrote to all the English bishops, severally and in a body, bidding them summon the king to restore the primate at once, lay all his dominions under interdict if he refused, and tell him that he should certainly be excommunicated by the Pope on Michaelmas day. The bishops however were all on the court-side; the interdict, duly published by Theobald, was unheeded save in his own diocese; and the king remained obstinate.[1068] But his wiser queen, aided by William of Ypres, who, however he may have sinned against others, was unquestionably Stephen’s truest friend, made an effort to restore peace; and at their request Theobald removed to St. Omer, as being a more accessible place for negotiation than his French retreat.[1069]

Matilda of Boulogne doubtless saw what Theobald must have known full well, that the quarrel involved a great deal more than strictly ecclesiastical questions. The issue which the ordeal of battle had failed to decide was on its trial now in a different form and before another tribunal. The most curious symptom of this feeling, perhaps, was the action of Brian Fitz-Count, who, after having been for years Matilda’s most devoted and most successful champion in the field, suddenly exchanged the sword for the pen and brought out a defence of his Lady’s rights in the shape of a little treatise which gained the approval of one of the cleverest men and greatest scholars of the time, Gilbert Foliot, abbot of Gloucester.[1070] Geoffrey Plantagenet, with his Angevin quickness, was the first openly to proclaim the true position of affairs by sending to Stephen, through Bishop Miles of Térouanne, a formal challenge to give up his ill-gotten realm and submit to an investigation of his claims before the papal court. Stephen retorted by a counter-challenge, calling upon Geoffrey to give up his equally ill-gotten duchy before he would agree to any further proceeding in the matter.[1071] Geoffrey took him at his word, but in a way which he was far from desiring. He did give up the duchy of Normandy, by making it over to his own son, Henry Fitz-Empress.[1072]

The crisis was now close at hand; Stephen was at last face to face with his true rival. He appears to have consented, as if in desperation, to the proposed trial at Rome. It seems at first glance as if the envoys whom he sent to represent him there must indeed have been driven to their wits’ end for an argument in his behalf when they raked up again a scandal which S. Anselm had laid to rest half a century ago, as to the validity of the marriage between Matilda’s father and mother.[1073] Yet such was the argument publicly put forth by many voices against the legality of her claims to the crown; and though one account of the proceedings states that her adversaries were triumphantly confuted by Bishop Ulger of Angers,[1074] another, written by an eye-witness whose own opinions were wholly in her favour, declares that her advocates answered never a word.[1075] The trial seems to have ended without any decision;[1076] it was however quickly followed by a very significant event. The witness just referred to was Gilbert Foliot, a Cluniac monk who since 1139 had been abbot of Gloucester, and whose reputation for learning, wisdom and holiness had secured to him the confidence of the primate and the consideration of all parties alike in Church and state. He had reluctantly and after some delay obeyed Theobald’s summons to join him at the papal court; once there, he seems to have flung all his energies into the organization of the new policy of which Theobald was to be the leader.[1077] During the session of the council at Reims the bishop of Hereford died.[1078] The Pope at once appointed Gilbert Foliot vicar of the diocese;[1079] in September he was consecrated by Theobald at St. Omer, with the consent and approval of the young duke of the Normans, given on the express condition that he should do homage for the temporalities of his see to the duke and not to the king.

The very first thing Gilbert did was to break this promise;[1080] but that Theobald should have consecrated such a man on such terms was a sign of the times which Stephen could hardly fail to understand. Theobald himself soon afterwards ventured back to England; crossing from Gravelines, he landed at Gosford in the territories of Hugh Bigod, by whom he was hospitably received; the bishops of London, Chichester and Norwich, with several barons, came to meet him at Hugh’s castle of Framlingham; the king was reconciled, the primate restored, the interdict raised, and the suspended prelates, all save one, allowed to resume their functions.[1081] The exception was Henry of Winchester, who by neglecting to go to Rome within the prescribed six months had necessarily fallen under the sentence pronounced against him by Eugene at the council of Reims. Even to him, however, Theobald was willing at Stephen’s request to hold out the hand of fellowship and forgiveness.[1082] But Henry of Winchester’s days of king-making were over. It was time for another Henry to appear upon the political scene, to take his cause into his own hands and stand forth as the champion of his own claims against the man who had supplanted him on his grandfather’s throne.