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In early 1148, Matilda sailed back to Normandy, never to return to England again. She was 46 years old and weary from thirteen years of constant campaigning against Stephen. When she arrived back in Normandy, she travelled to the capital city of Rouen. There she reunited with her two younger sons who she had not seen in nine years.1 Together with her eldest son Henry and her husband Geoffrey, the family spent the majority of 1148 regrouping and planning their next steps.
By spring 1149 Matilda felt sufficiently prepared to launch her next offensive campaign. Around Easter, Henry sailed to England, this time not with the intention of battling Stephen but to win the support of the most powerful men in England. As soon as he landed in England, he started to assert his rights as the rightful king of England against Stephen’s usurpation. He went to his mother’s stronghold of Devizes and received pledges of fealty from the men there. In May 1149, Henry travelled to Carlisle and was knighted by King David, who was now in his sixties. At the knighting ceremony, Henry also received homage from the northern barons.
On his way back south from Carlisle, Henry survived no less than three attempts at capture by Stephen’s men.2 Henry also found that while he was in the north at Carlisle, Stephen’s son Eustace had besieged Empress Matilda’s castle in Devizes. Henry’s forces were just robust enough to break the siege and send Eustace into a retreat. Henry then wisely realised that his army would not be sufficient to contend with the full force of the royal army so he sailed back to Normandy by the end of 1149.
Matilda may not have been active in England but she did not spend her time idly in Normandy. In fact, she spent the better parts of 1150 and 1151 negotiating with King Louis VII of France to support her son Henry as the rightful king of England. Louis was at first hesitant to desert his brother-in-law Stephen, but when Geoffrey and Henry came to him in Paris and offered to give him the Norman county of Vexin, he quickly acquiesced.3 On their way home from Paris in September 1151, Henry’s father Geoffrey of Anjou caught a fever and died at the castle of St Germain-en-Laye. Eighteen-year-old Henry was now the duke of Normandy and the sole leader of his faction in England.
Henry’s alliance with King Louis was short-lived due to a serious rift that developed between the two kings. In March 1152, Louis divorced his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, on grounds of consanguinity, but the real reason was lack of male heirs. The couple had been married for fifteen years and only had two daughters to show for it. King Louis had to have a male heir and he believed his wife Eleanor was incapable of providing one so he divorced her. Newly single Eleanor was a very valuable marriage prize because she controlled the huge, wealthy duchy of Aquitaine in her own right. Any man married to her would thus receive control of Aquitaine and become the ruling duke. Young Henry realised the potential in the marriage and he himself took the wealthy heiress for his own wife, marrying her only two months after her divorce from Louis.4
When Louis got word of what Henry had done, he was beyond livid. He felt not only betrayed but also humiliated because Henry would now govern more territory in France than he would. Louis responded by mustering troops and recruiting Stephen’s son Eustace to help him lead an invasion into Anjou. Henry was in Barfleur at the time preparing to sail to England when he got news of the French king’s invasion. He immediately led his troops back towards Anjou, causing the French troops to quickly disperse.
Meanwhile in England, King Stephen was working to secure his son Eustace as the rightful heir to the throne. He insisted on having his son preemptively crowned as a sort of ‘king in waiting’ but the archbishop of Canterbury refused to do so without express written permission from the pope. Stephen sent the archbishop of York, Henry Murdac, to Rome to plead his case to the pope. When Murdac returned to England in early 1152, the response from the pope was not what Stephen expected. The pope refused to acknowledge Eustace as the rightful heir to the throne of England. The previous pope, Innocent II, had been the one to approve of Stephen’s accession to the throne, but Innocent died in 1143. The new pope, Eugenius III, would not endorse Pope Innocent’s prior decree.5
Stephen then called all his barons together at the Easter court of 1152 and made them swear an oath to uphold his son’s rights to the throne. He also demanded that the archbishop of Canterbury, his own brother Theobald, crown Eustace as future king but he stoutly refused. Theobald would not risk excommunication from the church by disobeying the pope and besides, he didn’t trust Stephen.6 Theobald was so sure Stephen would force him to officiate over Eustace’s quasi-coronation that he fled into exile. The new pope levelled a further blow by refusing to renew Bishop Henry’s papal legate. Stephen had officially lost the support of both the pope and his own clergymen.
Stephen received the worst news of all just one month later when his beloved wife, Queen Matilda, died on 3 May 1152 after a short illness. She was more than just a wife, she was his partner in all manner of things. When he was in captivity, it was Queen Matilda who secured his release and chased his enemies out of London. She had been a model medieval queen in both her diplomatic and political skills. Stephen was somewhere between the ages of 55-60 years old when his wife died. He had spent the last fifteen years fighting and he was worn down, both physically and mentally. His greatest challenge was still to come. Would he be ready for it?