OLD DUFFER'S
BOOK CORNER

Empress Matilda
-and-
The Reign of Stephen

The Empress Matilda by Marjorie Chibnall for Blackwell

An excellent summary of the life of the Lady of the English covering both her attempts on the throne and her earlier marriage to Henry V. Considering how little evidence there is Marjorie Chibnall reorders it brilliantly to look at matters from the lady's point-of-view. This will certainly affect my game design (some time in the next decade).

It is remarkable given the number of books I have read how much has missed my eye as a matter of consequence. We see Matilda ruling as effectively as she can within her zone, minting coins, granting demesne and infeudating. Chibnall's view seems to be that Matilda was always intending to hand over kingship to her son, rather than the sub-Eleanor of Aquitaine plot hatched by some "historians". Clearly written with useful detail of her household knights.

The Reign of Stephen (Keith Stringer for Routledge)

A handy-dandy summary of the problems of Stephen's reign. Stringer (who wrote a very good life of Earl David of Huntingdon) seeks to reverse the common opinion of King Stephen as a Royal Don Quixote who bumbled around. In doing so his work becomes polemical where it should seek to give a basis of both sides views. He argues that the Norman state had major weaknesses which Stephen caught.

Firstly in the lack of a succession arrangement (something all new regimes will lack of course), and secondly in general administration. He scores Stephen reasonably highly as a military man. However, and here I found his conclusions strong, he believes Stephen suffered from lack of funds once the initial royal treasure was depleted. By this stage both sides were reduced to about a third of England, leaving the North to the Scots and the magnates. They controlled their territory well but were closer to Saxon eorls than kings.

Secondly, Stringer believes that after the Stephen's capture in 1141 it all went to pot. Not only was he out of the game for a period in which his enemies established the English rebels and captured Normandy, but when he returned the magnates on both sides were no longer interested in the fight. By losing at Lincoln, he lost the war, his opponents simply could not win it quickly.

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© Copyright 1997 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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