The Courts of Love - Jean Plaidy [68]
He had become important through his marriage to Matilda, the daughter of the King of England, because she had brought him Normandy. Her grandfather, known as William the Conqueror, had taken England in the year 1066 and as Duke of Normandy and King of England had made himself as important as—and perhaps more so than—the King of France. The second William, who had followed him on the throne, had not been the ruler his father had been but, fortunately for England, he had soon been followed by another son of the Conqueror, Henry, who was now seen to have been a very wise ruler. He had had, and this was unfortunate for England, only one son and a daughter. This son, another William, had at the age of seventeen been drowned in the wreck of the White Ship, a tragedy which would never have happened but for the drunken state of the sailors who were manning it. It was a great sadness for the King for he had lost his only legitimate son—although he had several who were illegitimate, for he was a very sensual man; and the matter of inheritance was immediately of the utmost importance. But for the accident to the White Ship, the strife which comes from civil war would have been avoided.
When his daughter Matilda had borne a son, King Henry must have been delighted, for if he took after his mother, he would be a very forceful character. It was soon after the boy’s birth that the King died, through eating too many lampreys, so they said. Poison was not suspected for, though he had been a stern ruler, he had been a wise one. His people had called him “the Lion of Justice” for he had brought back law and order to the land which it had not known since the days of the Conqueror.
But on the death of the King trouble started. It was an indication of what happened when kings did not leave a male heir. Now there were two claimants to the throne of England: Matilda, wife of Geoffrey of Anjou, and Stephen, son of Adela, the Conqueror’s daughter. So it was a question of the late King’s daughter or his nephew. There should have been no doubt, for Matilda was in the direct line, but because she was a woman, before she could claim the throne, Stephen swooped down and, with the support of many of the barons, took it. Matilda was not the woman to stand aside and let someone else take what was hers by right. Hence the trouble.
Stephen was affable and pleasant of manner but, it turned out, a weak king. Not that Matilda would have been much better. She was a formidable woman, strong-minded, very arrogant and over-bearing—characteristics which made her unpopular while the easy-going Stephen, ineffectual as he was, won the people’s affection.
Strife had continued on and off in England over the years. At one time Matilda was in the ascendant, at another Stephen.
It was at this time, while I was wondering how I could obtain release from my intolerable marriage, and just as I was beginning to think that Louis might agree that it was best for us both, that trouble with Geoffrey of Anjou arose.
It was always a matter for concern when one of France’s vassals began to gain too much power. The people of England might reject Matilda for their monarch, and Matilda had a promising son. He had joined his mother’s forces in England and had already shown himself to be a good soldier. If this boy was ever King of England—and he could be and, incidentally, Duke of Normandy as well—he would be far too powerful for Louis’s comfort. Stephen was the younger brother of Louis’s one-time enemy Thibault of Champagne but those old grievances had been forgotten now. Petronilla and Raoul were no longer at Court. The ban of excommunication had never been lifted, but as it did not seem to worry them, no one thought of it now. They had three children, a son and two daughters, and were quite resigned to the quiet life. Poor Raoul was very ill and not expected to live. I saw very