Sir Stephen

“ I thought that thou wast asleep."
"Time hasteneth with rapid foot when a lady entertains so comely a young man," said the High Priest with a terrible gentleness. "Once more I ask of thee, who is thy guest?"
Stephen had risen to his feet and was looking with troubled eyes into the face of her whom he had learned to love almost as a mother. He waited for her to speak. Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. He turned and fixed his eyes upon the man. "I know not who thou art," he said in a clear voice, "nor why thou dost question this beloved lady so harshly, but I can answer for myself. ”

“ The solemn deliberation ended in the choice of Stephen, the citizens swore to defend the king with money and blood, Stephen swore to apply his whole strength to the pacification and good government of the realm. It was in fact the new union of conquered and conquerors into a single England that did Stephen's work. ”

“ Stephen acted with the violence of a weak man; he had already lost the obedience of the barons, and the people must have learnt that his promises were not to be relied on; now he ensured his fall by offending the clergy. The legate summoned him to appear before a synod at Winchester, and the king of England actually appeared by his counsellor, Alberic de Vere, who made his defence. When he refused to restore the bishops’ castles there was some talk of laying the case before the Pope. This he forbade, and yet appealed to Rome himself. ”

“ The king's first two years were years of success and prosperity. Two risings of barons in the east and west were easily put down, and in 1137 Stephen passed into Normandy and secured the Duchy against an attack from Anjou. But already the elements of trouble were gathering round him. Stephen was a mere soldier, with few kingly qualities save that of a soldier's bravery; and the realm soon began to slip from his grasp. He turned against himself the jealous dread of foreigners to which he owed his accession by surrounding himself with hired knights from Flanders ”

“ As he hung upon the cross in agony, the Lord spake to him and said, 'This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.'"
"Who is this Stephen?" said Caiaphas, in a low, terrible voice. "And whom dost thou call Lord?"
Anna trembled with terror, she tried to speak, but the words died upon her lips.
"Speak, woman!"
"Stephen is--the son of the Greek who took our child. The man hath been punished for his sin. He also perished with the Lord." ”

“ During his retirement he led a holy and humble life, and after his death became the special saint of his church. Stephen had one more quarrel with Archbishop Theobald. He desired to have his son Eustace, an evil and violent man, crowned as his successor. This was forbidden by the Pope, and the primate and his suffragans refused the king’s request. He tried to frighten them by shutting them in the house where they were consulting. The archbishop escaped across the Thames in a boat, and went abroad, and the king again seized the temporalities of the see. ”

“ I have never wanted anything like this before but Stephen is more to me, much, much more to me than anything that I have ever had—more, far more than my own life. I haven't much to offer but if you will let me keep Stephen you can have all the rest. You can send me back to Bucket Lane, take my work, anything ... I want Stephen ... I want Stephen. God, he is such a good boy. He has always been good and he will make such a fine man. There won't be many men so fine as he. He's good as gold. God I will die myself if he may live, I'm no use. I've made a mess of things—but let him live and take me. ”

“ Sir Stephen leaned towards her. "There will be no further disgrace, Lady Jane," he whispered. "I have come up to tell you."
She paused a moment, supposing Sir Stephen did not understand. "He will be committed—as we hear—to-day for trial, Sir Stephen. And the result of that trial—we, of course, know only too well what it may be. Nothing can save him from standing his trial."
"One thing can, my dear lady. Nay—no, I was not meaning his escape by flight, as was first assumed down there"—nodding his head in the imaginary direction of the lock-up ”

“ A plot which Robert of Gloucester had been weaving from the outset of his reign came indeed to a head in 1138, and the Earl's revolt stripped Stephen of Caen and half Normandy. But when his partizans in England rose in the south and the west and the King of Scots, whose friendship Stephen had bought in the opening of his reign by the cession of Carlisle, poured over the northern border, the nation stood firmly by the king. Stephen himself marched on the western rebels and soon left them few strongholds save Bristol. His people fought for him in the north. ”

“ Each of them had a legal claim to the throne, Stephen's the better, he being the nearest male heir. No woman had as yet ruled in England. Maud's mother had been of ancient English descent, which gave her popularity among the Saxon inhabitants of the land. Stephen was personally popular, a good-humored, generous prodigal, his very faults tending to make him a favorite. Yet he was born to be a swordsman, not a king, and his only idea of royalty was to let the land rule—or misrule it if preferred—itself, while he enjoyed the pleasures and declined the toils of kingship. ”

“ This year king Stephen died, and he was buried with his wife and his son at Faversham; they had built that monastery. When the king died the earl was beyond sea, and no man durst do other than good for very dread of him. When he came to England he was received with much honour, and was consecrated king at London on the Sunday before Christmas, and he held a great court there: and on the same day that Martin abbat of Peterborough should have gone thither he sickened, and he died on the 4th before the Nones of January. And that day the monks chose another abbat from among themselves. ”

“ Stephen, the son of one of the greatest Judges who ever adorned the English Bench—Sir James Fitz-James Stephen—was not merely a most lovable man, possessed of extraordinary intellectual powers, but his total personality was of so rare a kind as to be indescribable to those who never came under its conquering influence. ”

“ After the death of his son William, the king placed his affections on his nephew, and always liked his companionship in all his voyages. Stephen was a great favorite in 075England, for he was as affable and agreeable to the poorest and humblest people as he was to the nobles. His wife, too, was daily winning hearts, and when the king's health began to decline, it was fondly hoped that this young couple would succeed him instead of his daughter, the Empress Matilda. ”

“ ENGLAND UNDER MATILDA AND STEPHEN.
The King was no sooner dead, than all the plans and schemes he had labored at so long, and lied so much for, crumbled away like a hollow heap of sand. Stephen, a grandson of the Conqueror, whom he had never mistrusted or suspected, started up to claim the throne.
Stephen was the son of Adela, the Conqueror's daughter, married to the Count of Blois. To Stephen, and to his brother Henry, the late King had been liberal; making Henry Bishop of Winchester, and finding a good marriage for Stephen, and much enriching him. ”

“ So shall thy mother rejoice in the day of thy birth."
"They will imprison him," muttered Iddo Ben Obed to himself as he turned away. "He hath assuredly spoken contrary to the law; and why should I not witness to the truth? A man must faithfully perform the duties whereunto he is called without partiality. This Stephen is a Greek--at least by his father--and is it lawful to set the son of a malefactor in a place of authority? I say not. If he were once out of the way I could win the maid Anat. I know that I could. I can give her a home and abundance of all that she hath need of. ”

“ Stephen. Stephen received a Christian education and was baptized by St. Adalbert. Upon the occasion of his marriage with Gisela, sister of the future emperor, St. Henry II, Stephen vowed to give his people the blessings of Christianity. One of the most important measures taken by him for the security of the new faith was the founding at Gran of an archbishopric with ten subordinate sees. As Stephen's patron saint in battle had been St. Martin, he founded the Benedictine monastery of Martinsberg. He also founded hospices for the reception of Hungarian pilgrims at Ravenna, Rome, and Jerusalem. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Stephen was a brave, generous, and popular noble, and both the peers and commons of England would have preferred his rule to that of the King’s daughter; when, therefore, he made claim to the throne no opposition was raised. “For when the nobles of the kingdom were assembled at London, he promised that the laws should be reformed to the satisfaction of every one of them, and William, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was the first of all the nobles to take the oath of fidelity to the Empress as Queen of England, now consecrated Stephen to be King. ”

“ Stephen’s mercenaries.
This anarchy began to assume a form when Robert of Gloucester, alleging his previous oath to Matilda, and asserting that the conditions on which he had accepted Stephen had not been kept, renounced [81] his fealty. His influence was in his earldom, and in the West of England; the headquarters of his party was Bristol; and his agent during his absence was Milo, Constable of Gloucester, afterwards Earl of Hereford. Nearly all the West, and by no means the West only, declared for Matilda. ”

“ Prince Albert Victor became warmly attached to Mr. Stephen, who gives in some private letters, quoted in Mr. J. E. Vincent’s memoir of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale, a characteristic picture of the life led by the Royal pupil and his tutors in a little house in the park at Sandringham.
“He is a good-natured, unaffected youth,” writes Mr. Stephen, “and disposed to exert himself to learn some history.... We are six in this little house, a sort of adjunct to the big one in whose grounds it stands, and we lead a quiet and happy reading-party sort of life with all the ordinary rustic pursuits.” ”

“ Stephen, calm and steadfast in the midst of their terrible violence, is seen with his face towards heaven, imploring the pardon of the Eternal Father for those who thus attack him, with the utmost piety and fervour. ”

“ In 1877 Stephen was made a Knight Commander of the Star of India, and in 1878 he received the honorary degree of D.C.L. at Oxford. Early in 1879 he was appointed judge of the queen's bench division. He held that office a little more than eleven years. The combination of mature intellectual patience and critical subtlety which marked the great masters of the common law was not his, and it cannot be said that he made any considerable addition to the substance of legal ideas. His mind was framed for legislation rather than for systematic interpretation and development. ”

“ A BELIEVER IN THE NAZARENE.
"If only I had been there, perchance upon even me might a little of the blessing have fallen. And yet, was it not by the mercy of the all-seeing One that I was chained to the side of him who slew Jesus? We are one flesh, as it is written in the law; if he is accursed, I also am accursed."
"Knowest thou our Lord so little that thou dost believe what thou hast said?" said Stephen, a smile dawning in his dark eyes.
The wife of Caiaphas wiped away one or two slow tears. "How can I know him?" she asked bitterly. ”

“ It is easy to see that the conditions of life in England were most unsettled in the reign of King Stephen. There was no safety in town or village, and the dwellers on the manors must have suffered most severely. ”

“ Will he not give thee love as dear as thine!
SCENE XI.—A hilly road. STEPHEN, trudging alone, pauses to look around him. Stephen.
Not a footprint! not a trace that a blood-hound
would nose at! But Stephen shall be acknowledged
good dog and true. If I had him within stick-length—mind
thy head, brother Julian! Thou hast not
hair enough to protect it, and thy tonsure shall not.
Neither shalt thou tarry at Jericho.—It is a poor man
that leaves no trail; and if thou wert poor, I would not
follow thee. ”

“ Could he not yet choose, being set down at the right hand of God?"
"And dost thou think to question the doings of God's elect?" said John, a ring of authority in his mild tones.
"Nay, my son, chide not the lad," said Mary. "I myself doubted whether indeed the casting of lots be pleasing to God. God hath permitted men many things in the past because of their blindness."
"It is a practice of wicked men," cried Stephen. "I have seen thieves do the like to apportion their booty. And did not the Roman soldiers also at the foot of his cross cast lots for the garments of the crucified one?" ”

“ Stephen had by his first wife five sons and four daughters, and by his second wife, who died before him, four sons and five daughters. His descendants at the time of his death were over a hundred. One of his sons, Alfred, was a canon of the Anglican Cathedral in Sydney, and another, Matthew Henry, is now a judge of the supreme court in the colony. ”