The Monarchs

The Monarchs: King Stephen (1135-1154) - King of Anarchy

A good man and a disastrous king. He seized the throne from the rightful heir and presided over the Anarchy - nineteen years of civil war so grim that men said Christ and his saints slept.

King Stephen presided over the worst breakdown of order in English history between the Norman Conquest and the Wars of the Roses — a period so grim that it has its own name: the Anarchy. For nearly two decades, England was torn apart by a civil war over who should wear the crown, and government simply collapsed. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded of these years a sentence that has never been forgotten: that men said openly that Christ and his saints slept.

Stephen himself is one of the more sympathetic failures on the English throne. He was, by nearly every account, personally brave, generous, affable, and genuinely likable — a chivalrous knight and a decent man. But he was also weak, indecisive, and fatally lacking in the ruthless, iron authority that medieval kingship demanded. He took a crown that a woman had a better claim to, could not hold the country together, and spent his reign watching it descend into chaos. His is a story of how a good man can make a disastrous king, and of how the absence of firm royal authority could plunge a whole kingdom into misery.

Key Facts

Reigned: December 22, 1135 to October 25, 1154
Born: around 1092 or 1096 at Blois, France
Parents: Stephen, Count of Blois, and Adela of Normandy (daughter of William the Conqueror)
Married: Matilda of Boulogne, a staunch and capable ally
Seized the throne ahead of his cousin, the Empress Matilda, the designated heir
His reign, the Anarchy, saw a devastating 19-year civil war
Died: October 25, 1154 at Dover; buried at Faversham Abbey

The Broken Oath

Stephen's whole reign was built on a broken promise, and it never escaped that original flaw. He was a grandson of William the Conqueror through his mother, and a favored nephew of King Henry I. When Henry I's only legitimate son drowned in the wreck of the White Ship in 1120, the succession was thrown into crisis, and Henry named his daughter, the Empress Matilda, as his heir. He compelled his barons, Stephen among them, to swear solemn oaths to accept Matilda as queen after his death.

But the idea of a female ruler was deeply unwelcome to the Anglo-Norman baronage; there was no precedent for a woman ruling England in her own right, and Matilda was, moreover, married to Geoffrey of Anjou, a man the Norman barons disliked and distrusted. So when Henry I died in December 1135, Stephen acted with a decisiveness he would rarely show again. He rushed to England, seized the treasury, and had himself crowned king before Matilda — who was in France — could respond. Many barons, preferring a man to a woman and an oath conveniently forgotten to the disruption of a contest, accepted him. Stephen was king. But he had taken the throne by breaking a sacred oath and pushing aside the rightful heir, and that fact poisoned everything that followed.

King Stephen, from a later depiction of the king whose reign collapsed into civil war

The Descent into Anarchy

For a few years Stephen's grip seemed secure, but his weaknesses soon told. He was too generous and too trusting, giving away crown lands and privileges to buy support, and too inconsistent, alienating powerful men through indecision and broken faith — most damagingly the Church, when he arrested a group of powerful bishops in 1139 and lost the support of the ecclesiastical establishment that had helped crown him.

In 1139, the Empress Matilda invaded England to claim the throne that was rightfully hers, and the civil war began in earnest. Matilda was as formidable and determined as Stephen was amiable and irresolute, and she found powerful support, above all from her half-brother Robert, Earl of Gloucester, an able and loyal commander. The country split, barons declaring for one side or the other, often according to local rivalries and self-interest as much as principle. Neither side could win a decisive victory, and the war settled into a long, grinding stalemate that dragged on for years, devastating the country.

The Empress Matilda, Stephen’s rival for the throne, whose claim plunged England into the Anarchy

The Turning Wheel of Fortune

The war swung back and forth with dramatic reversals. Its most extraordinary moment came in 1141, at the Battle of Lincoln, where Stephen — fighting with conspicuous personal bravery, wielding first a sword and then a battle-axe until both broke in his hands — was captured by Matilda's forces. For a few months, it seemed the war was over. Matilda was triumphant, and prepared to be crowned queen in London.

But Matilda then threw away her victory. Proud and imperious, she alienated the Londoners with her haughty demands, and they rose against her and drove her out before she could be crowned. Shortly afterward, her chief supporter Robert of Gloucester was himself captured — and the two sides agreed to exchange prisoners, trading the captured king for the captured earl. Stephen was free again, and the war resumed. The wheel of fortune had turned full circle, and the stalemate reasserted itself. Neither side was strong enough to win, and neither weak enough to lose.

Life During the Anarchy

The real victims of this royal contest were the ordinary people of England, and it is their suffering that gives the Anarchy its terrible reputation. With royal authority collapsed and no strong king to keep order, many barons ran wild. They built unlicensed castles — the chroniclers speak of adulterine castles springing up everywhere — and used them as bases to terrorize and plunder the surrounding countryside, extorting money, seizing goods, and torturing those who resisted.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives one of the most harrowing accounts of any period in English history — of men and women tortured for their money, of villages burned, of the land laid waste, of people starving. It was in describing these years that the chronicler wrote that people openly said Christ and his saints slept, so complete was the absence of divine or royal protection. Modern historians debate just how widespread the devastation really was — it varied greatly by region, and some areas escaped relatively unscathed — but the enduring image of the Anarchy is of a kingdom where the failure of kingship had let loose misery and violence upon the innocent. It was the clearest possible demonstration of why strong royal authority mattered.

Queen Matilda of Boulogne

One figure in Stephen's reign showed exactly the qualities the king himself lacked, and she was his wife. It is one of the ironies of the Anarchy that it was fought largely between two women — the Empress Matilda, claiming the throne, and Matilda of Boulogne, Stephen's queen, defending it — while the men around them proved less decisive than either.

Queen Matilda of Boulogne was tireless, resourceful, and utterly devoted to her husband's cause, and at the reign's lowest points it was she, more than Stephen, who saved the crown. When Stephen was captured at Lincoln in 1141 and his cause seemed finished, it was Queen Matilda who rallied his supporters, raised forces, and led the resistance that drove the Empress Matilda out of London before she could be crowned. She negotiated, campaigned, and even besieged, working with Stephen's brother, Bishop Henry of Winchester, to reverse the disaster and secure her husband's release through the exchange of prisoners. Without her, Stephen would very likely have lost his throne in 1141, and the war would have ended a decade early with the Empress triumphant.

Her death in 1152 was a heavy blow to Stephen, both personally and politically, robbing him of his ablest supporter at a critical moment — and it was followed the next year by the death of their son Eustace, which finally broke Stephen's will to fight on. The queen who had done so much to keep Stephen on the throne did not live to see the settlement that gave it away. She is one of the more remarkable and least remembered figures of the twelfth century: a woman whose steel repeatedly rescued a kingdom that her gentle husband could not hold together on his own.

The Settlement

The war was finally ended not by victory but by exhaustion, death, and a deal. Matilda eventually withdrew to Normandy, but her cause was taken up by her son, Henry of Anjou — young, brilliant, energetic, and everything Stephen was not. Henry invaded England in 1153 and campaigned with a vigor that made clear the future belonged to him.

By then, both sides were worn out, and a personal tragedy opened the way to peace. Stephen's own son and heir, Eustace, died suddenly in 1153. With his heir gone, Stephen lost the will to continue fighting to secure the succession for his line. The two sides came to terms in the Treaty of Winchester: Stephen would remain king for the rest of his life, but Henry of Anjou — Matilda's son — would be his heir and successor, disinheriting Stephen's surviving son. It was a compromise that ended the war and, crucially, restored the rightful line. Stephen did not have long to enjoy the peace; worn out, he died the following year, in October 1154, and Henry succeeded him without opposition as Henry II, founder of the Plantagenet dynasty and one of England's greatest kings.

Legacy

Stephen's reign is almost universally judged a failure, and by the standards of medieval kingship it was. He took a throne he had sworn to give another, and he lacked the strength to hold the country together, plunging England into nearly twenty years of civil war and misery. He is the classic example of a man whose personal virtues — courage, generosity, kindness — were precisely the wrong qualities for the brutal demands of the crown. A harder, more ruthless, more decisive man might have crushed the opposition and ruled effectively; Stephen's very decency and irresolution let the kingdom slide into anarchy.

And yet his reign carries a genuine historical importance, both as a lesson and in its outcome. The Anarchy stands as the great cautionary tale of what happened when royal authority failed — a lesson his successors, above all Henry II, took deeply to heart, restoring strong central government precisely because everyone had seen the alternative. The chaos of Stephen's reign is part of why Henry II built the powerful legal and administrative machinery that he did. And the settlement that ended the war gave England the Plantagenets, the dynasty that would rule for three centuries. In a sense, Stephen's greatest service to England was to fail so completely that his failure paved the way for one of its greatest kings, and to have the grace, at the end, to accept the rightful heir and restore the line he had usurped. He was a good man and a bad king, and England paid a heavy price for the difference — but out of his failure came the strong monarchy that would define the age to come.

Places Connected to King Stephen

Faversham Abbey, Kent. Founded by Stephen and his queen Matilda of Boulogne as their dynasty's mausoleum, and his burial place; the abbey was destroyed at the Reformation, and his remains were lost.
Lincoln Castle. Site of the 1141 battle where Stephen was captured fighting to the last with sword and axe.
Oxford Castle. Where the Empress Matilda was famously besieged and made a daring winter escape across the frozen river, camouflaged in white against the snow.
Wallingford Castle, Oxfordshire. A key stronghold that held for Matilda throughout the war, and near where the final peace was negotiated in 1153.
Arundel Castle, West Sussex. Where Matilda first landed and was besieged in 1139, at the start of the war; Stephen chivalrously let her go, a decision that prolonged the conflict for years.