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Review of “King Stephen” by Edmund King

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One of the hallmarks of the Yale English Monarchs series is their selection of top-flight specialists to write biographies of their subjects. This is no less true for Stephen, the biography for whom represented the culmination of Edmund King’s long career studying his reign. Over the course of four decades, not only did King contribute an impressive amount of scholarship on the period – much of which was reflected in the notes and bibliographies of most of the previous books that I’ve read for Stephen up to this point – but he also taught an advanced course on him throughout much of his academic career which, as he states in his acknowledgements, helped him shape the book. As such, he seems not just the logical choice to contribute a volume to a series that strives for definitive studies, but an inevitable one.

And his book on Stephen embodies all of the strengths in such a choice. Starting with an opening chapter describing Stephen’s family background and his early years as a count, King provides an account that moves chronologically through his subject’s life. Though he claims at the start that his book is a biography of Stephen rather than a “life and times” study, he nonetheless provides considerable background explanation of institutions and events. As his notes demonstrate, this is grounded mainly in the contemporary chronicles, which he quotes frequently throughout the text. From them he provides a sympathetic account of Stephen that nonetheless judges him a failure, concluding that he was acting a part and doing so without the conviction that characterized a strong ruler.

It’s an interesting judgment, and one that pushes back in some respects against the favorable revisionism of the biographies that preceded King’s. Yet the effectiveness of his argument is marred somewhat by the way in which he presents it. While the chronological presentation of Stephen’s life is surprisingly coherent, the narrative itself doesn’t flow well between them as the chapters themselves are more akin to essays on periods of his reign than convenient breaks in a single interconnected work. Moreover, after his initial chapter examining Stephen’s rule as count, once his subject takes the throne King focuses on England at the expense of the Norman half of the Anglo-Norman empire. Though hardly unique to King’s study and to an extent an understandable omission in a series devoted to studying English monarchs, many of King’s counterparts have demonstrated persuasively that such a prejudice leaves out factors that are vital to understanding the decisions the occupants of the English throne faced during this period.

To draw a line that excludes an important part of Stephen’s domain is an unfortunate decision on King’s part that defines the limits of the book’s value as a study of his reign. Immensely learned and written with both wit and insight, it’s a book that, like so many of its predecessors in the Yale English Monarchs series is likely to serve as an enduring work on its subject and one that anyone seeking a full and intelligent assessment of Stephen should read. For those desiring a comprehensive assessment of Stephen within the covers of a fluid narrative, though, other books may serve their interests more effectively.

Review of “King Stephen” by Donald Matthew

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There’s a great deal to like about Donald Matthew’s book on Stephen, not the least of which is its author’s straightforwardness. At the very start of his book, he makes his purpose clear, which is to provide an account of Stephen’s reign that is accessible to the general reader. It’s a goal that he fulfills successfully with a text that explains the key issues in a clear style free of historical jargon and the employment of Latin, French, and other foreign terms beyond what is absolutely necessary. He adds to this with a charming anecdote in his preface in which he describes how his introduction to Stephen began as it did for many of his other readers, with a description of the Anarchy in a book aimed towards a popular audience. It’s a disarmingly effective way to connect with his target audience.

The anecdote is also important in another respect, as it sets up Matthew’s target in his book. From the first chapter onward he makes his view clear that Stephen is an unfairly maligned king. While this is an argument that had gained considerable currency before Matthew’s book was published in 2002, he takes it much further than previous Stephen biographers by focusing less on Stephen and more on his historical reputation. This becomes evident with his approach to his subject, which begins not with Stephen’s early life, but with a chapter entitled “Scene Setting” in which he provides a short synopsis of his reign before delving into the evolution of his historical reputation in the centuries that followed. It isn’t until after a chapter describing the monarchy Stephen inherited that he returns to his reign in greater detail, recounting events and summarizing the choices.

Using this approach Matthew makes a number of interesting points absent from the previous biographies that I had read, my favorite of which was his observation that, had Stephen been succeeded by one of his sons, the subsequent dynasty would have done more to nurture his historical reputation. It’s one of those so-obvious-you-missed it points that I didn’t fully appreciate until Matthew made it, but it makes excellent sense. It’s certainly one to keep in mind as well when considering other monarchs who were the last of their line, such as the later Richards, but it’s one that is employed here effectively as a defense.

And therein lies the main issue with Matthew’s study of Stephen, which is that it’s less of a biography than it is an effort to rehabilitate his historical reputation. There’s a complete absence of personal details (Stephen’s wife doesn’t even merit a mention in the book), as the focus is more on Stephen’s actions and the criticisms against them. In refuting them Matthew is to an extent pushing against an open door, as many of his arguments are similar to those Stringer and Crouch make in their books. But Matthew’s rehabilitation certainly eclipses theirs in terms of its focus and clarity. It’s a great book for anyone interested in Stephen’s historical reputation and the damage done to it, but it falls short as a biography of the king.

Review of “The Reign of King Stephen, 1135-1154” by David Crouch

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When David Crouch’s study of Stephen was released in 2000, it was the first major work focused on his reign since Ralph Davis’s biography was published over three decades before. In that time, the ongoing scholarship about the period raised questions about some of the conclusions and suppositions on which Davis’s book was based. Though Keith Stringer addressed this in his admirable short study of Stephen’s reign, the nature of his work – a short study designed as a focused introduction to its subject – precluded the broader reexamination that Crouch provides in this work.

As his title indicates, Crouch’s study is not a biography of Stephen but an examination of his rule over England. Yet Crouch’s approach is more overtly biographical than Stringer’s book in that it focuses on Stephen’s character to understand the problems he faced during his reign. This fuels his avowedly revisionist approach to his subject, as he argues that Stephen was both a better king and a better person than he has been traditionally regarded. As evidence of the latter in addition to highlighting Stephen’s bravery on the battlefield – a point all but his most hostile chroniclers acknowledge — he points to Stephen’s devotion to his wife Matilda as a demonstration of his fundamentally character, and argues that such orders as his directive to devastate Wiltshire were common to the warfare of his age.

Yet it is the question of Stephen’s record as king that is the main focus of Crouch’s book. And he makes a persuasive case for Stephen as an underrated monarch both by his analysis of his subject and his engagement with the existing historiography. Part of Crouch’s case rests with Stephen’s relations with his contemporaries, presenting Stephen as a good judge of men and observing that the loyalty he won from them demonstrates the regard in which he was held. Crouch also views Stephen as a better manager of the nobility and relations with the Church than has been claimed, with the promotion of his supporters far more restrained than many have claimed. This would help explain why, even in the worst stages of the “Anarchy,” most of England remained loyal to Stephen and free from warfare.

If all this is true, then why is Stephen’s reign viewed as poorly as it is? Crouch cites a combination of factors, starting with Stephen’s inability to judge situations as well as he could men. Aspiring to be another Henry, he lacked the intellectual capabilities that made his predecessor such a successful ruler. Crouch faults him in particular for mismanaging both Normandy and his relations with Wales, which created opportunities that Empress Matilda was able to exploit. Nor did it help Stephen’s reputation that he was followed by a monarch who earned credit from historians for establishing traditions in administration and common law. Sandwiched between two such consequential kings esteemed for their governance, is it any wonder that Stephen’s reign suffered by comparison?

I finished Crouch’s sympathetic examination of Stephen’s reign with a new understanding of his subject, one more nuanced than what I had gained from either of the previous books I read about it. That I found it as persuasive as I did was due to Crouch’s skills as both a historian and as an author, as he does a very skillful job of laying out his arguments and explaining the reasons for his conclusions. With my examination of the available biographies of Stephen only at its halfway point it remains to be seen whether it is the best book available about him. At this point, however, it is certainly the book by which I will measure the ones to follow.

Review of “The Reign of Stephen: Kingship, Warfare and Government in Twelfth-Century England” by Keith J. Stringer

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The Lancaster Pamphlets are a series, that, according to their cover copy, “provide a concise and up-to-date analysis of major historical topics” for students taking their “A” levels and enrolled in college courses. Until now I had never read any of the titles published under its imprint, nor was I familiar with Keith Stringer, who, like many of the authors of the other books in the series, was a member of the history department at Lancaster University when he wrote it. As a result, when I began reading his study of Stephen’s reign I had few expectations for what I might find inside.

This may have been a factor in why I enjoyed it as much as I did. Stringer’s book offers its readers a concise analytical examination of key factors shaping Stephen’s rule and its outcome. His approach is impressively direct, as he stakes out his views and explains his reasoning behind them. In this manner he makes a revisionist case for regarding Stephen as a better king than he has been traditionally regarded. Henry gets a share of the blame for failing to provide for an “untroubled succession,” which Stringer underscores was one of the key duties of any monarch. From this perspective, Stephen’s seizure of the throne was a welcome effort to fill a dangerous vacuum created by Henry’s unwillingness to commit fully to Matilda’s succession.

But if Stephen actions in 1135 were a promising step towards stability, where did it go wrong? Here Stringer presents Stephen as facing a crisis not seen since the year of the Conquest. Unlike Henry, who only had to manage one crisis at a time, Stephen sometimes faced as many as three simultaneously: with Scottish and Angevin enmity inhibiting his ability to concentrate his forces against Matilda. Here Stringer’s expertise as a historian of medieval Scotland comes into play, as he does a fine job of explaining David’s role in exacerbating Stephen’s problems. Along with the other challenges, this soon exhausted finances which the Anglo-Norman state could not readily replenish. The result were wars which dragged on, posing a constant drain on the treasury and which ended only because of Henry Plantagenet’s willingness to accept the promise of succession instead of the elusive total victory he and his mother had both sought.

For all of its concision, Stringer’s coverage of Stephen’s reign is surprisingly comprehensive, covering the standard subjects of government operations, relations with the magnates, and Stephen’s dealings with the Catholic Church. What it does not provide, though, is any discussion of Stephen’s life prior to taking the throne, or his personal life while he occupied it. To be fair to Stringer, this is not what he set out to cover, and in describing Stephen’s reign he does a fine job of examining the key developments and in presenting Stephen’s actions in a sympathetic light. But anyone who is looking for a biography of the ill-fortuned king would be better advised to turn elsewhere.

Review of “King Stephen” by R. H. C. Davis

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When Ralph Henry Carless Davis published his short biography of Stephen in 1967, he had the field entirely to himself. Indeed, in the book’s preface, he states that the “classic study of Stephen’s reign” until then was a biography of Geoffrey de Mandeville written three-quarters of a century earlier by the Victorian medievalist J. Horace Round. It’s quite a statement about Stephen’s standing in the pantheon of English kings that for decades he best book about him was a biography about a former follower turned rebel. During that time, however a number of collections of charters, most notably the Gesta Stephani and Regesta Regun Anglo-Normannorum were published, both requiring a revision of the understanding of the events of Stephen’s reign and the materials on which to base it.

For this task Davis was well equipped. The son of Henry William Carless Davis, who had served as Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford until his premature death in 1928, he had inherited his father’s work on the third volume of the Regesta and was co-editor of this collection of known charters from Stephen’s reign. This work made him ideally suited to undertake a fresh look at Stephen’s reign based on the sources, and he rose to the challenge successfully. His book offers an efficient narrative of Stephen’s life that briskly covers his early years in France, his ascent to the English throne, and his efforts to maintain his hold on the crown. His focus throughout is on the political and military activities of his subject, with little examination of many of the aspects of his reign (such as his personal life or his court) that have been addressed by many of the other biographies of monarchs from this period that I have read.

Davis more than makes up for this, however, with the scope of his assessment. Not content simply to chronicle Stephen’s activities, he offers an explanation as well for why Stephen took the actions he did and why they succeeded or failed. This helps support his view of Stephen as a man of poor judgment and a devious ruler who failed to engender trust among his contemporaries. This proved damaging to his ability to win over the magnates, whose support was key to determining the outcome of the war. In Davis’ estimation, Stephen was fortunate to have Matilda as an opponent, as her mixture of stubbornness and caution prevented her from turning Stephen’s capture in 1141 into final victory in their clash for power.

It will be interesting to compare this judgment with those of Stephen’s subsequent biographers. That a quarter century would pass before another historian would publish another book about Stephen’s life and reign, however, suggests that few contemporaries took serious issue with his judgments. Based as they are on Davis’s formidable command of the sources of the era, they proved an enduring reassessment of Stephen and his ill-fated rule. Yet Davis wears his knowledge lightly, making this book an excellent starting point for my exploration of the king and his times and a high standard of scholarship for subsequent works to meet.

On to Stephen!

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King Stephen (not King, Stephen)

Of the different ways by which English monarchs have attained the throne, Stephen’s stands out for one that was so dependent upon travel. Though a grandson of William the Conqueror and a beneficiary of Henry I’s patronage, Stephen seemed destined to spend his days as a French count until his cousin William Adelin died on the White Ship in 1120. While Henry promoted the prospects of his daughter Matilda, it was Stephen’s swift rush to England after Henry’s death in 1135 which proved decisive in determining who would succeed him. Yet for all of the boldness of his action his reign was characterized by instability and warfare, as Stephen and Matilda fought each other in what historians today regard as the first English civil war – one that probably would not have occurred but for those two fateful trips.

Perhaps surprisingly for a monarch embroiled in such a major conflict there are only a half-dozen modern works focused on Stephen’s life and reign. These I have decided to read in their order of publication, which means that I will start with R. H. C. Davis’s 1967 short biography of Stephen. Davies was a medievalist of high regard in his era, and evidently his book was the first biography of Stephen published in several decades. It seems to have served as the standard analysis for the next several decades, which is more likely than not a sign of the quality of Davis’s work Regardless, I will shortly find out for myself.

Once I finish Davis’s book I’m going to read two books with very similar titles that suggest a shared focus. Keith Stringer’s 1993 book The Reign of Stephen is the first book from the “Lancaster Pamphlets” series that I have read for this project, and promises a concise interpretive overview of Stephen’s tenure as king. I plan on following this up with David Crouch’s longer study, The Reign of King Stephen, that was published seven years later. Both titles suggest that the books will be less about Stephen’s life than his time on the throne, but as titles are probably an even worse way to judge books than by their covers I decided to give both works a chance.

By contrast, the final three books will me straightforward biographies of Stephen. Donald Matthew’s 2002 book promises a more revisionistically sympathetic take on the king that incorporates a wider range of sources. The final two books, Edmund King’s 2011 King Stephen and Carl Watkins’s 2015 Stephen: The Reign of Anarchy are both from series – Yale English Monarchs and Penguin Monarchs respectively – with which I am now quite familiar, and promise to be interesting capstones to read after absorbing the previous for studies on their mutual subject.

Just one book on . . . Henry I

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Having read the biographies of nearly a dozen monarchs for this project, I find myself at an unexpected milestone. With Henry I, I find myself wishing for the first time that there were more studies of his life and achievements than there are available to read. This isn’t a knock on the three biographies I read about his life, all of which are fine works of scholarship. Rather, it’s that from them I gained an appreciation of the importance of Henry’s reign for English history, particularly in terms of the development of the English state. That a range of differing opinions exist within these books as to the nature of these achievements only underscores how much is left to be said about Henry’s time on the throne and his legacy. Clearly there is much room for new scholarship about his kingship.

The three biographies about Henry offer a surprisingly diverse range of entry points about his life, and given Henry’s significance and the limited number of studies about it all are worth reading. Yet while I found Edmund King’s short book on Henry a valuable study, it is one that is best read by readers who have a prior knowledge of Anglo-Norman history. As such it works better as a compliment to other works on the period than as an entry point to Henry’s life in its own right.

Far better suited in that respect is C. Warren Hollister’s biography of Henry for the Yale English Monarchs series. Thorough and insightful, it provides extensive coverage of Henry’s reign and makes an excellent case for its significance to English history. Its value is only marginally limited by the fact that Hollister died before he could complete work on his manuscript, as the editing would have helped to sharpen the case Hollister makes in it of the transformative nature of Henry’s governing reforms. Such revising also could have made it an incontestable starting point for anyone wanting to read a book about Henry, rather than just a strong contender for the title.

One of the remarkable aspects of Judith Green’s biography is that she challenged Hollister’s interpretation of Henry so closely on the heels of the release of his book in 2001. Yet this is just one of the many things that distinguishes her excellent study, which not only offers a different perspective on Henry’s reputation as a reformer, but which provides a coverage of Henry’s rule over Normandy that is lacking in King’s and Hollister’s more Anglo-centric studies. It’s because of this that, while all three studies deserve reading, Green’s is the one that people should seek out as the best single biography of this important monarch.

Review of “Henry I: King of England and Duke of Normandy” by Judith A. Green

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In my review of C. Warren Hollister’s biography of Henry I noted that during his career he was regarded as the foremost expert on the life and reign of the king. A close second to that title, and the successor to it upon his death is Judith Green. An emerita professor of medieval history at the University of Edinburgh, she made a name for herself with a groundbreaking study on the personnel and operations of his government, which she then followed up with other works on the Norman era. As she notes in her introduction, she was already in progress on her own biography of Henry when Hollister’s was published posthumously in 2001. While such an event may have discouraged others, she continued her work on it and saw it through to its publication five years later.

At first glance there may seem little difference between the two books. Green adopts an approach to presenting Henry’s life that appears standard for biographers of English kings, as she opens with a chapter on the sources for it before spending the bulk of her text covering her subject’s life chronologically. In each of these she emphasizes a key theme during the years she covers, spotlighting an aspect of Henry’s life that focuses her analysis on a major issue or concern. She then follows her chronological presentation with three chapters that provide a more extended examination of three key areas of his reign – Henry as ruler, his relations with the Church, and the composition and culture of his court – before providing a succinct conclusion summing up her argument.

It’s when the reader gets into the text that the key differences emerge. Green makes clear from the start that she offers a perspective of Henry’s reign that is different from Hollister’s in some important respects. As her subtitle suggests she gives more attention to Henry’s rule over Normandy than either Hollister or Edmund King do in their biographies. This likely influenced to her interpretation of how he exercised power as king, which she argues was more traditional in its approach. Unlike Hollister, who emphasized Henry’s innovative use of government in ruling England, Green sees him using a more conventional employment of force to intimidate his barons into obedience. She underscores this by noting the collapse of his arrangements for his daughter Mathilda to succeed him, which is a powerful argument for the personal rather than institutional nature of Henry’s power.

Arguments such as this point to the value of Green’s book as a counterpoint to Hollister’s work. Yet it more than stands on its own as a biography of Henry thanks to the crispness of her analysis and her ability to incorporate within her assessment of his reign a sense of Henry as a person. I finished the book with a clear sense of who Green’s Henry was not just as a monarch but as a man, which is further testament to her skills as both a historian and as an author. Thanks to them, hers is a biography that it as least the equal of Hollister’s, and arguably surpasses it in its ability to provide a comprehensive and cohesive interpretation of Henry as a ruler.

Review of “Henry I” by C. Warren Hollister

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One of the distinguishing features of the Yale English Monarchs series has been the editors’ commitment to getting the most renowned experts on the respective kings and queens of England to write biographies about them. The result has been works of high scholarly distinction which reflect some of the latest thinking about not just their subjects but the times in which they lived. The books themselves may not necessarily be the “best” biographies available about that particular monarch, but they all reflect the highest possible standard of scholarship and set a formidable bar for students going forward.

This is why that when the editors commissioned their volume on Henry I they turned to Charles Warren Hollister. Regarded today as one of the great pioneers of Anglo-Norman studies in general and on Henry’s reign in particular, he was a natural choice to write a biography about the king, one that would have been a capstone to his decades of work. Hollister’s labors, though, suffered a tragic setback in 1990 when both his draft manuscript and his extensive research notes were destroyed by wildfires in his home town of Santa Barbara. As dispiriting as this must have been for him, he restarted his work and had written eight of his projected eleven chapters prior to his death in 1997.

These chapters form the bulk of Hollister’s biography. In them he addresses the sources for Henry’s life, his early years and his claiming of the throne, and his military campaigns and foreign policies as king. The remaining three chapters were completed by Amanda Clark Frost, one of his former doctoral students, which she did using his notes and other writings on the subject. These provide an analysis of Henry’s administration and his relations with the Church before describing his final years and his legacy for his realm. It’s a contribution that is acknowledged in the book but not on the cover, which unfairly slights Clark’s considerable role in writing it.

The portrait of Henry that emerges in this book is of a shrewd king who governed his realm authoritatively and innovatively. While acknowledging that Henry’s rule was still very much in the nature of a personal monarchy, the two authors give him considerable credit for building the foundations of the medieval bureaucratic state that would provide such effective governance in the centuries that followed. Yet they qualify this praise with the glaring failure of his reign: that of not providing for a stable transfer of power after his death. It’s a judgment that I expect will loom larger once I delve into the civil war that followed his reign.

This is just one of the many appreciations I gained from a work that was full of interesting insights about its subject. Yet the book also bore signs of its troubled development. There is a disappointing amount of repetition throughout the book, which suggests some of the challenges Frost must have faced in turning Hollister’s draft chapters into a publishable work. Given the circumstances, I can understand why it would be easier to leave as much of the original manuscript untouched as possible, and with everything else that was needed to complete Hollister’s labor it was probably the smartest and safest choice. This is why I was grateful for Frost’s efforts. Thanks to her and everybody else who pitched in to fill the for Hollister we have today a work that embodies much of the learning and wit for which its original author was known. Yet I still finished it with a twinge of regret that Hollister never had the opportunity to complete his work himself. Additional editing and polishing would have made for a truly spectacular book on Henry that would have been the definitive work on his life and reign. That we never saw the book is our loss, but the one we do have does a great job of filling that hole as much as seems possible.

Review of “Henry I: The Father of His People” by Edmund King

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One of the qualities of the “Penguin Monarchs” series that I have come to appreciate is the caliber of the authors the editors employed to produce their short works. The names read like a catalog of some of the leading historians in their fields: John Gillingham, Anne Curry, John Guy, Mark Kishlansky, and David Cannadine, who are just some of the renowned names adorning the volumes that have been produced. Seeing their names attached to brief biographies aimed at a general audience can at times seem like overkill, but with them comes the depth of study that can bring real insight to even a cursory overview.

Among those for whom this is true is Edmund King. As a longtime historian of the medieval era, King has written several well-regarded books about Anglo-Norman England, including a biography of Stephen for the Yale English Monarchs series. His erudition is fully on display in his short biography of Henry I, which begins with a brief consideration of Henry’s historical reputation and his conscious role in shaping it. King also stakes out within it his own approach to his subject, which involves assessing Henry on the monarch’s own self-professed values.

King then follows this up with five chapters covering Henry’s life. While arranged in a chronological manner, he adopts for each of them an interpretive theme that is based on Henry’s priorities. As a result, the reader gets chapters that focus on such issues as loyalty, his family, and his governing style as king. It’s an interesting way of looking at Henry, but at times it’s an approach that seems affected. Fortunately, King doesn’t press it too far, as he allows himself the flexibility in each chapter to cover aspects of Henry’s life that don’t necessarily fit with a rigidly thematic approach.

In covering Henry, however, King makes an assumption of his reader’s familiarity with the Anglo-Norman background that works to the detriment of the book’s goal. It’s a flaw that is ironically the result of one of the greatest merits of the Penguin series, which is the expertise the authors bring to their subjects. While this is reflected in King’s perceptive and assured judgments of Henry, it also results in a book that reads more as an extended essay meant for an audience of students rather than the introduction to Henry’s life and times aimed towards the general reader.

In this respect King’s book can be a little frustrating. For all of his knowledgeable assessments of Henry, his book falls short in terms of its goal. This doesn’t make for a bad biography – indeed, King’s may prove to be the best one available – but in terms of making the life of such a popularly underappreciated monarch more accessible King falls short of the goal.