John Horace Round

“ The public is slow to believe that writers who have gained its ear are themselves often in error and, by the weight of their authority, lead others astray. At the same time, I would earnestly insist that if, in the light of new evidence, I have found myself compelled to differ from the conclusions even of Dr. Stubbs, it in no way impeaches the accuracy of that unrivalled scholar, the profundity of whose learning and the soundness of whose judgment can only be appreciated by those who have followed him in the same field. ”

“ THE EARLDOM OF ESSEX. The death of Geoffrey was a fatal blow to the power of the fenland rebels. According, indeed, to one authority, his brother-in-law, William de Say, met his death on the same occasion, [700] but it was the decease of the great earl which filled the king's supporters with exultant joy and hope. [701] For a time Ernulf, his son and heir, clung to the abbey fortress, but at length, sorely against his will, he gave up possession to the monks. [702] Before the year was out, he was himself made prisoner and straightway banished from the realm. ”

“ Were such nobles as these "new men"? Had their "poverty" to be "relieved"? Why, their very names are enough; they are those of the noblest and wealthiest houses in the baronage of Stephen's realm. Even the last, Hugh de Beaumont, though not the head of his house, had two elder brothers earls at the time, nor was it proposed to create him an earl till, by possession of the Beauchamp fief, he should be qualified to take his place among the great landowners of the day. ”

“ Nothing less, in my opinion, than a combined revolt in the Eastern Counties which should take Stephen in the rear, as soon as the arrival from Normandy of Geoffrey of Anjou and his son should give the signal for a renewal of the struggle, and a fresh advance upon London by the forces of the west country. Earl Geoffrey himself was now at the height of his power. If he were supported by Aubrey de Vere, and by Henry of Essex with Peter de Valoines (who are specially named in Geoffrey's charter) , he would be virtually master of Essex. ”

“ It would not be possible here to discuss this point in detail, so I will merely give it as my own conviction that while comital rank was at this period so far a personal dignity that men spoke of Earl Hugh, Earl Gilbert, or Earl Geoffrey, yet that an earl without a county was a conception that had not yet entered into the minds of men. ”

“ The growing importance of London had been recognized in successive coronations from the Conquest, and now that it was rapidly supplanting Winchester as the destined capital of the realm, it would be more essential than ever that the coronation should there take place, and secure not merely the prestige of tradition, but the assent of the citizens of London. ”

“ With us, Gerald would be grieved to hear, the ancient form survives not only for the bargain but the bet, though it only continues in full vigour as the sign of the marriage contract, where "the minister ... shall cause the man with his right hand to take the woman by her right hand, and to say after him as followeth,"—even as the Druses, we have seen, make their contracts to-day, and as the Empress Maud sealed her own seven centuries ago. ”

“ Of Earl William Miss Norgate writes: "The son was as loyal as his father was faithless; he seems, indeed, to have been a close personal friend of the king, and to have well deserved his friendship." [744] His fidelity was rewarded by the hand of the heiress of the house of Aumâle, so that, already an earl in England, he thus became, also, a count beyond the sea.
Yet well might men believe that the awful curse of Heaven rested on this great and able house. ”

“ Lastly, Stephen was confronted throughout by a rival claimant, who formed a splendid rallying-point for all the discontent in his realm: but Henry reigned for as long as Stephen without a rival to trouble him; and when he found at length a rival in his own son, a claim far weaker than that which had threatened his predecessor seemed likely for a time to break his power as effectually as the followers of the Empress had broken that of Stephen. He may only, indeed, have owed his escape to that efficient administration which years of strength and safety had given him the time to construct. ”

“ The earl might be willing to save his soul at the cost of restoring the abbey. To Mildenhall he flew in all haste, but only to find that the earl had already lost consciousness. There awaited him, however, the fruit of his oppressor's tardy repentance in the form of instructions from the earl to his son to surrender Ramsey Abbey. Armed with these, the abbot departed as speedily as he had come. [690]
The tragic end of the great earl must have filled the thoughts of men with a strange awe and horror. ”

“ The first point to strike one, on examining the list of witnesses, is the presence of no less than eight earls and of no more than one bishop. To these, indeed, we may add perhaps, though by no means of necessity, the Earl of Essex himself. Though the evidence is, of course, merely negative, it is probable, to judge from similar cases, that had other bishops been present, they would appear among the witnesses to the charter. The absence of their names, therefore, is somewhat difficult to explain, unless (if present) they were at enmity with Geoffrey. ”

“ The really important fact is this: that we have a continuous chain of evidence, proving that "Robert, the king's son," was not yet Earl of Gloucester, at least as late as April-May, 1121.
Against this weight of accumulated evidence what is there? Absolutely nothing but that Tewkesbury charter, which is quoted from Dugdale's Monasticon, where it is quoted from a mere Inspeximus of the 10th Henry IV. (1408-9) , some three centuries after its alleged date! ”

“ For where the Empress had granted Geoffrey the office of justice and sheriff of Essex alone, Stephen makes him justice and sheriff, not merely of Essex, but of Herts and of London and Middlesex to boot. ”

“ No attempt was made to crown the Empress; the legate simply proposes that she should be elected Lady of England and Normandy. It is just possible that the consecration which she had once received as empress might be regarded as superseding the necessity of a new ceremony of the kind, but it is far more likely that, so long as Stephen was alive and not formally degraded, the right conferred on him by coronation was regarded as so far indefeasible that no one else could be allowed to share it. ”

“ Taking this, as I believe it to be, as our earliest charter of creation extant or even known, the chief point to attract our notice is its intensely hereditary character. Geoffrey receives the earldom "hereditarie," for himself "et heredes sui post eum hereditario jure." The terms in which the grant is made are of tantalizing vagueness; and, compared with the charters by which it was followed, this is remarkable for its brevity, and for the total omission of those accompanying concessions which the statements of our historians would lead us to expect without fail. ”

“ All that has been hitherto really known is that Queen Adeliza married William de Albini between King Henry's death (December, 1135) and the landing of the Empress in the autumn of 1139, and that her husband subsequently appears as an earl. The assertion that he became an earl on his marriage, in virtue of his possession of Arundel Castle, is pure assumption and nothing else. [934] I have already dwelt on the value of the Canterbury charter to Geoffrey as evidence not only that William was Earl "of Sussex," but also that he was already an earl at Christmas, 1141. ”

“ THE GREAT SEAL OF THE EMPRESS. (See p. 116.)
There yet remains one point, in connection with this remarkable charter, perhaps the most striking, certainly the most novel, of all. This is that of the seal. According to the transcript in the Ashmole MSS., the legend "in circumferentia sigillo" was this: "Matildis Imperatrix Rom' et Regina Angliæ."
Now, that any such seal was designed for the Empress has never been suspected by any historian. We cannot, on a question of royal seals, appeal to a higher or more recognized authority than Mr. Walter de Gray Birch. ”

“ At Stephen's accession, thirty years of legal and financial oppression had rendered unpopular the power of the Crown, and had led to an impatience of official restraint which opened the path to a feudal reaction: at the accession of Henry, on the contrary, the evils of an enfeebled administration and of feudalism run mad had made all men eager for the advent of a strong king, and had prepared them to welcome the introduction of his centralizing administrative reforms. ”

“ Now here, in 1141, at the very height, one might say, of the Anarchy, we not only find the Exchequer spoken of as in full existence, but, which is most important to observe, we have the precise Exchequer formulæ which we find under Henry II. The "Terræ datæ," or alienated Crown demesnes, are represented here by the "dominia que de predictis comitatibus data sunt," and the provision that they should be subtracted from the fixed ferm ("a firma subtrahantur") is a formula found in use subsequently, as is, even more, the phrase "ad scaccarium computabuntur." ”

“ Stephen, however, was naturally eager to make the most of the papal action, especially when he found in his oath to the Empress the most formidable obstacle to his acceptance. The sanction of the Church would silence the reproach that he was occupying the throne as a perjured man. Hence the clause in his Oxford charter. To the advantage which this letter gave him Stephen shrewdly clung, and when Geoffrey summoned him, in later years, "to an investigation of his claims before the papal court," he promptly retorted that Rome had already heard the case. ”

“ The importance of securing, as quickly as possible, the performance of the ceremony of coronation is well brought out by the author of the Gesta in the arguments of Stephen's friends when combating the primate's scruples. They urged that it would ipso facto put an end to all question as to the validity of his election. [28] The advantage, in short, of "snatching" a coronation was that, in the language of modern diplomacy, of securing a fait accompli. Election was a matter of opinion; coronation a matter of fact. ”

“ The mention of Stockbridge proves that the besieged must have fled by the Salisbury road, their line of retreat by Andover being now barred at Wherwell. After crossing the Test, the fugitive Empress must have turned northwards, and made her way, by country lanes, over Longstock hills, to Ludgershall. So great was the dread of her victorious foes, now in full pursuit, that though she had ridden more than twenty miles, and was overwhelmed with anxiety and fatigue, she was unable to rest even here, and, remounting, rode for Devizes, across the Wiltshire downs. ”

“ That one who had rivalled, but a year ago, the king himself in power, should meet an inglorious death at the hands of a wretched churl, that he who had defied the thunders of the Church should fall as if by a bolt from heaven, were facts which, in the highly wrought state of the minds of men at the time, were indeed signs and wonders. ”

“ But let us return to the point from which we started, namely, the witness of Geoffrey's charter to the differentiation of the sheriff and the justice. It proves that the sheriff could no longer discharge the functions of "a royal justiciary," without a separate appointment to that distinct office. When we thus learn how Geoffrey became both sheriff and justice of Essex, we can approach in the light of that appointment the writ addressed "Ricardo de Luci Justic' et Vicecomiti de Essexa," on which Madox relies for Richard's tenure of the post of chief justiciary. ”

“ With Pembroke the case was different. He had been among the nobles who, the Christmas before, had assembled at Stephen's court, and had attested the charter there granted to the Earl of Essex. He may, in the interval, have quarrelled with Stephen and joined the party of the Empress; but I think the occurrence of his name may be referred, with more probability, to another cause, that of his family ties. It is, indeed, to family ties that we must now turn our attention. ”

“ In his learned observations on the "obscurities" of the style "justitia or justitiarius," Dr. Stubbs writes that "the capitalis justitia seems to be the only one of the body to whom a determinate position as the king's representative is assigned in formal documents" (i. 389) . It was probably the object of Geoffrey, when he secured this particular style, to obtain for himself all the powers vested in "the king's representative," and so to provide against his supersession by a justiciar claiming in that capacity. ”

“ The prominent part that the Earl of Gloucester played in the events of which I write may justify the inclusion of an essay on the creation of his historic earldom, which has, in the main, already appeared in another quarter.
In the words of Mr. Eyton, "the dispersion of error is the first step in the discovery of truth." [2] Cordially adopting this maxim, I have endeavoured throughout to correct {vii} errors and dispose of existing misconceptions. To "dare to be accurate" is, as Mr. Freeman so often reminds us, neither popular nor pleasant. ”

“ It is distinctly implied by William of Malmesbury that the primate, seizing his opportunity, on Stephen's appearance in London, had extorted from him, as a preliminary to his recognition, as Maurice had done from Henry at his coronation, and as Henry of Winchester was, later, to do in the case of the Empress, an oath to restore the Church her "liberty," a phrase of which the meaning is well known. Stephen, he adds, on reaching Winchester, was released from this oath by his brother, who himself "went bail" (made himself responsible) for Stephen's satisfactory behaviour to the Church. ”

“ But, on the other hand, the charter, broadly speaking, illustrates, by the retrograde concessions it extorts, the cardinal factor in the long struggle between the feudal nobles and their lord the king, namely, their jealousy of that royal jurisdiction by which the Crown strove, and eventually with success, to break their semi-independent power, and to bring the whole realm into uniform subjection to the law. ”