ction
and consecration.[*]

Stephen, that he might further secure his tottering throne passed a
charter, in which he made liberal promises to all orders of men; to
the clergy, that he would speedily fill all vacant benefices, and would
never levy the rents of any of them during the vacancy; to the nobility,
that he would reduce the royal forests to their ancient boundaries, and
correct all encroachments; and to the people, that he would remit the
tax of danegelt, and restore the laws of King Edward.[**] The late king
had a great treasure at Winchester, amounting to a hundred thousand
pounds; and Stephen, by seizing this money, immediately turned against
Henry's family the precaution which that prince had employed for their
grandeur and security; an event which naturally attends the policy of
amassing treasures. By means of this money, the usurper insured the
compliance, though not the attachment, of the principal clergy and
nobility; but not trusting to this frail security, he invited over from
the continent, particularly from Brittany and Flanders, great numbers
of those bravoes, or disorderly soldiers, with whom every country in
Europe, by reason of the general ill police and turbulent government,
extremely abounded.[***] These mercenary troops guarded his throne by
the terrors of the sword; and Stephen, that he might also overawe all
malecontents by new and additional terrors of religion, procured a bull
from Rome, which ratified his title, and which the pope, seeing this
prince in possession of the throne, and pleased with an appeal to his
authority in secular controversies, very readily granted him.[****]

[* Such stress was formerly laid on the right of
coronation, that the monkish, writers never give any prince
the title of king till he is crowned, though he had for some
time been in possession of the crown, and exercised all the
powers of sovereignty.]

[** W. Malms, p. 179. Hoveden, p. 482.]

[*** W. Malms, p. 179.]

[**** Hagulstadt, p. 259, 313.]

{1136.} Matilda and her husband Geoffrey were as unfortunate in Normandy
as they had been in England. The Norman nobility, moved by an hereditary
animosity against the Angevins, first applied to Theobold, count of
Blois, Stephen's elder brother for protection and assistance; but
hearing afterwards that Stephen had got possession of the English crown,
and having, many of them, the same reasons as formerly for desiring a