and also swore fealty to her infant son, whom his grandfather ‘appointed to be king after him’ (cf. Ralph de Diceto, i. 247, and Rog. Hov. i. 187).
Three years later one great baron, at least, asserted that Henry had afterwards absolved his subjects from both these engagements and designated Stephen as his heir. However this may have been, no sooner was Henry dead (1 Dec. 1135) than Stephen sailed from Wissant for England to claim the crown. Repulsed from Dover and Canterbury, he was warmly welcomed in London, and chosen king by its ‘aldermen and wise folk.’ Winchester, and with it the treasury, was secured for him by his brother, Bishop Henry [see Henry of Blois], who also, by pledging his own word for the new king's fulfilment of a promise to maintain the liberties of the church, induced Archbishop William of Canterbury to crown him at Westminster, seemingly on 22 or 25 Dec. Stephen then issued a brief charter confirming to his subjects, in general terms, ‘all the liberties and good laws which they had under King Henry and King Edward.’ On 6 Jan. 1136 he attended his predecessor's funeral at Reading. Normandy had now acknowledged him as its duke, while Matilda had lodged an appeal against him at Rome for his perjury towards her. The appeal was heard early in 1136 (Round, Mandeville, app. B). Pope Innocent II gave no formal judgment on it, but practically he decided in Stephen's favour by sending him a letter in which he recognised him as lawful sovereign of England and Normandy. Meanwhile the king of Scots [see David I] had invaded Northumberland in Matilda's behalf. Stephen bought him off by a grant of three English earldoms to his son [see Henry of Scotland]. Soon after Easter, at Oxford, all the barons swore fealty to Stephen, and he issued a second charter, dealing chiefly with the rights of the church, but containing also a pledge to surrender all lands afforested since the time of William Rufus, and a general promise to abolish unjust exactions and maintain the good old customs of the realm. A few weeks later, on a report of the king's death, Hugh Bigod [see Bigod, Hugh, first Earl of Norfolk] seized Norwich Castle, Baldwin of Redvers [q. v.] threw himself into Exeter, and Robert of Bampton revolted in Devon. Stephen first dislodged Hugh, then he besieged and took the castle of Bampton, blockaded that of Exeter till thirst drove its garrison to surrender, pursued Baldwin to Southampton, and frightened him into doing the like. He spent 1137 chiefly in Normandy, which its overlord, Louis VI of France, agreed to let him hold on the same terms as his predecessor had held it, viz. his eldest son did homage for it in his stead. Stephen also made a truce with Matilda's husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, who was threatening to invade the duchy. On the king's return to England in December, he was met by a demand from David of the earldom of Northumberland for his son Henry. Its refusal was followed by another Scottish invasion. In February 1138 Stephen drove the Scots back across the Tweed. David retreated upon Roxburgh, and endeavoured to lure the English king after him, hoping to surround him and bring him to ruin. But Stephen turned aside and harried south-western Scotland, till lack of provisions compelled him to retire to his own realm.
By this time Englishmen were finding out how greatly they had been mistaken when, at Stephen's accession, ‘they weened that he should be even so as his uncle was.’ Brave, generous, high-spirited, warm-hearted, open-handed, courteous and affable towards all classes, Stephen was a man to attract affection, but not to inspire awe or command obedience. Haunted, as he naturally was, by a feeling of insecurity, he had begun by surrounding himself with a host of Flemish mercenaries, whose violence and greed made them an abomination to the people, and taking for his chief counsellor a Flemish adventurer, William of Ypres [q. v.], whose influence over him excited the jealousy of the barons and the old ministers of King Henry. Next, he had ‘broken his vow to God and his pledge to the people’ by holding, in autumn 1136, a forest court at Brampton (Huntingdonshire), evidently one of the places which he had promised to disafforest. He sought to form a party devoted to himself by creating new earldoms and alienating crown lands to men whose attachment he was anxious to secure. A statement said by William of Malmesbury to have been current a few years later, that Stephen debased the coinage, is not borne out by his extant coins (Howlett, preface to Chron. of Stephen, vol. iii. p. lii); but he ‘dealt out and scattered soothly’ the treasure which Henry had left; and when nothing of his own remained for him to give, he did not scruple to despoil those whom he mistrusted for the benefit of his favourites. For instance, on Christmas eve 1137, without any apparent provocation, he laid siege to Bedford Castle, in order to take it from its commandant, Miles Beauchamp, and transfer it to Hugh le Poor, whom he had created Earl of Bedford (cf. Gesta Steph. pp. 30–32 and
