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CHAP. XXVIII.

Holinshed,

ders, and was taken ill there; but it is doubtful whether he died at Dover or at Canterbury. All writers agree that he was buried at the abbey at Faversham, by the side of and his son.

Vol. II., p. 110.
Rapin,
his
Vol. I., p. 210.

Gervas,

col. 1366.
Holinshed,
Vol. II., p. 99.

Robert of
Gloucester.

queen

We have seen that Faversham formed part of the possessions of the Crown; and so it continued until the reign of Stephen, who granted the hundred and manor to William de Ipres for his faithful services; but when he had determined to found an abbey here (A.D. 1148), and dedicate it to St. Saviour, he made an exchange with his favourite, and removed some of the Benedictine monks from the Priory at Bermondsey to Faversham. Clarenbald, the first abbot, received his benediction from Archbishop Theobald at the high altar, Canterbury, in the presence of Stephen's Queen Matilda.

Both the King and the Queen appear to have formed a strong attachment to Faversham, and they took great interest in the erection of the abbey which they founded there. The Queen was often there while the works were in progress, when she would frequent the monastery of St. Augustine's at Canterbury. Archbishop Theobald was at this time at enmity with Sylvester, the Prior, and carried his hostility so far as to prohibit for a time the celebration of divine worship there. The Queen, however, continued to attend the monastery, and was in the habit of sending for the monks of Christ Church to officiate before her.

We have further proof of the attachment of Stephen to Faversham in the charter of pacification between him and Prince Henry of Normandy, in which he obtained from the Prince a confirmation of the abbey of Faversham by name. It boasted of possessing a piece of the Holy Cross, "which Godfrey Boylon for kyndred had so sent to King Stephene."

This attachment was all forgotten, when on the suppression of the Abbeys, about 400 years afterwards, the leaden

*The majority of writers state Dover,

coffin in which King Stephen's body was wrapped was for a small gain removed and "the body thrown into the next water," the creek. Who shall say that the remains of the Queen (who proved such a devoted wife) and Prince met not with the same treatment? Sic transit. This proceeding is the more remarkable when we find Weever, in the reign of Charles I. (1631), assuring his readers that the monuments of Faversham church were more carefully preserved than in any other that he had seen in all Kent.

Throughout the whole of this reign (a period of nineteen years) England was in a constant state of anarchy and confusion; in short, it was rapidly returning to barbarism. Stephen (according to Stowe) was "a noble man and hardy, of passing comely favour and personage," and appears to have possessed many qualities which would have adorned. a throne under less trying circumstances. In delineating his character, his valour, clemency, and generosity, form a good foreground, but zeal has given very opposite representations of it. Did the Crown really belong to the Empress Maud, to Stephen, or to the nation?

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The rules concerning the succession to the throne were not even then clearly defined and settled; for we find William II., Henry I., Stephen, Henry II., and John Allen's Royal were all elected by their partisans, and Maud's claim was Prerogative,

founded on the fact that the nobles had chosen her in her father's lifetime.

The picture of this reign from the Saxon Chronicle, quoted alike by Hallam, Mackintosh, and other writers, may be worth inserting here.

P. 44.

"The nobles and bishops built castles, and filled them with devilish Hallam, and wicked men, and oppressed the people, cruelly torturing men for Vol. II., p. 319. their money. They imposed taxes upon towns, and, when they had exhausted them of everything, set them on fire.* You might travel a day, and not find one man living in a town, nor any land in cultivation. Never did the country suffer greater evils. If two or three men were seen

The destruction by fire of cities and towns was of constant occurrence during this reign; Rochester has been referred to (p. 281). York, with its Minster and thirty-nine churches, and the greater part of Bath, were burnt about the same time.

Mackintosh,
Vol. I., p. 133.

CHAP. XXVIII. riding up to a town, all its inhabitants left it, taking them for plunderers. And this lasted, growing worse and worse, throughout Stephen's reign." "The bands led by Stephen were no otherwise distinguished from others than by the audacity with which the numbers of his Flemish mercenaries encouraged him to assault and destroy the magnificent monasteries, from an attack on which, those who were most enured to rapine, but who still dreaded the guilt of sacrilege, recoiled with horror."

Camden, Vol. I., 2nd ed., p.

211.

The closing career of William de Ipres, called by FitzStephen "an unsupportable burthen to Kent" ("violentus Cantii incubator") only remains to be noticed. He fortified Rye and erected the tower there, still named after him. He built the Abbey at Boxley, supplying it with monks from Clarevalle, in Burgundy. On the death of Stephen he was compelled with other Flemings to quit England. According to Camden, "he marched off with tears in his Vol. I., p. 223. eyes," while Rapin says Henry dismissed all the foreigners

Ib., 231.

Ib.,

259.

without suffering so much as one to remain in the country. "William of Ipres, their General, did not stay to be ordered to depart, the cold reception he had met with at Court having already convinced him his absence would be very acceptable." Gervase of Canterbury, however, says he went of his own accord fearing Henry. The Pipe Roll of 2 and 3 Henry II., quoted in the next chapter, shows that his revenues in Kent were accounted for by the royal collectors, from which it may be inferred that his lands were confiscated. He died a monk in the Abbey of Laon in Flanders.

THE

CHAPTER XXIX.

HENRY II.-RICHARD I.

HE accession of Henry II., the first of the line of Plan- CHAP. XXIX. tagenet, and the grandson of Henry I.,* on 25th October, 1154, was hailed with joyful hope by all classes in England, who looked forward to a mitigation of those sufferings they had so long endured. When he received the news of Stephen's death, he was besieging a castle Rapin, Vol. I., p. 222. in Normandy, and he did not arrive in England for six weeks, having waited no less than a month for a favourable wind. What would be said of this in these days of rapid movements by sea and land? He was immediately crowned, with his Queen Eleanor (Countess of Poitou, Duchess of Acquitaine in her own right, and the divorced. wife of King Louis of France), at Westminster, by Archbishop Theobald. His disbanding the foreign troops which Stephen had employed, and the seizure into his own hands of all the possessions of William de Ipres, the Earl of Kent, were noticed in the last chapter. The Sheriff of Kent included the income of some of this confiscated property in the following return :

"THE GREAT ROLL OF THE PIPE. 2 HEN. II. "The Sheriff [Ralph Picot] renders account.

...

In Canterbury 291.,

*I ought not to pass over what perhaps was only a scandal of the day, and so I may state, on the authority of Polydore, Matt. Paris, and other writers, that Stephen is supposed to have been the father of Henry II., by the Empress Maude; and an avowal of the relationship led to the reconciliation between the belligerent parties in 1153.-Holinshed, Vol. II., p. 108.

CHAP. XXIX. in grain; in Middeltune, 1007. in grain; in Tarenteford, 1007. in grain; in Einesford, 321. in grain; all of which William de Ipra had.*

-

Vol. II., p. 286.

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"And the same Sheriff renders account

"In Canterbury, 30%. in money, which William de Ipra had. And to the same, 551. in Boxele, in money. And to the same, 100l. and 688. and 7d. in money, in Hou."

A somewhat similar account is rendered in the next year. Looking at the value of money, it shows how bountiful the late King must have been to his favourite, † who was also the custodian of the Castle of Canterbury.

Henry razed to the ground nearly all the castles and fortresses which had been illegally erected by the Barons during the preceding twenty years, and to his great credit he earnestly sought to reform a depraved and corrupted Government. His eldest son William, though a child, had fealty sworn to him, but dying soon after, a similar recognition was obtained from the great council for his next son Henry, and on attaining fifteen he was, at the solicitation of his father, crowned at Westminster, June 14th, 1170. Hence he is often called by old writers, "the young King," or "Henry III," though never succeeding to the Crown, as he died in 1188.

A very large part of France belonged to Henry, either in his own right or through his Queen, including the whole Atlantic coast, so important in its communication with England. Not content, however, Henry endeavoured to extend his dominions, and he claimed and sought to recover the earldom of Toulouse in right of his wife. For this purpose he collected a great army, in which the celebrated Thomas Becket served; he was then Archdeacon of Canterbury, having previously been appointed to the living of Otford, in this county. Becket at this

*Money payments had not therefore altogether superseded payments in kind at this time.

Lord Lyttleton, in his Life of Henry II., says that William de Ipres knew no scruples in obeying the will of his master, nor any moderation in enriching himself, being too wicked to believe that any man could be virtuous. He, however, is said to have died very penitent, A.D. 1162.

Bromton and other old writers tell a romantic story of the parentage of Becket, making him the son of Gilbert Becket, a London trader, by a

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