of the succession, were but ill ascertained: so that
a doubt might justly have arisen, whether the crown was not in a great
measure elective. This uncertainty exposed the nation, at the death of
every king, to all the calamities of a civil war; but it was a
circumstance favorable to the designs of Stephen, Earl of Boulogne, who
was son of Stephen, Earl of Blois, by a daughter of the Conqueror. The
late king had raised him to great employments, and enriched him by the
grant of several lordships. His brother had been made Bishop of
Winchester; and by adding to it the place of his chief justiciary, the
king gave him an opportunity of becoming one of the richest subjects in
Europe, and of extending an unlimited influence over the clergy and the
people. Henry trusted, by the promotion of two persons so near him in
blood, and so bound by benefits, that he had formed an impenetrable
fence about the succession; but he only inspired into Stephen the design
of seizing on the crown by bringing him so near it. The opportunity was
favorable. The king died abroad; Matilda was absent with her husband;
and the Bishop of Winchester, by his universal credit, disposed the
churchmen to elect his brother, with the concurrence of the greatest
part of the nobility, who forgot their oaths, and vainly hoped that a
bad title would necessarily produce a good government. Stephen, in the
flower of youth, bold, active, and courageous, full of generosity and a
noble affability, that seemed to reproach the state and avarice of the
preceding kings, was not wanting to his fortune. He seized immediately
the immense treasures of Henry, and by distributing them with a
judicious profusion removed all doubts concerning his title to them. He
did not spare even the royal demesne, but secured himself a vast number
of adherents by involving their guilt and interest in his own. He
raised a considerable army of Flemings, in order to strengthen himself
against another turn of the same instability which had raised him to the
throne; and, in imitation of the measures of the late king, he concluded
all by giving a charter of liberties as ample as the people at that time
aspired to. This charter contained a renunciation of the forests made by
his predecessor, a grant to the ecclesiastics of a jurisdiction over
their own vassals, and to the people in general an immunity from unjust
tallages and exactions. It is remarkable, that the oath of allegiance
taken by the nobilit