Stephen (Penguin Monarchs)

by Carl Watkins Book 13 in the Penguin Monarchs series.

Amazon

2.5(5)

Carl Watkins examines Stephen’s contested kingship and the civil conflict traditionally known as the Anarchy. The biography follows his seizure of the throne after Henry I’s death, the rival claim of Empress Matilda and the shifting loyalties of magnates who repeatedly changed the balance of power.

Stephen could be generous, brave and personally attractive, yet struggled to convert those qualities into durable authority. Watkins shows how warfare, disputed legitimacy and the absence of an accepted succession settlement prolonged instability until the Treaty of Wallingford recognised Matilda’s son Henry as Stephen’s heir.

The book also reassesses the familiar description of Stephen’s reign as simple anarchy. Royal government continued to function unevenly, and local power depended heavily on the choices of bishops, earls and castellans whose support could change with circumstance. Stephen’s failure was therefore not the disappearance of government but his inability to make one disputed settlement of the succession universally accepted.