Heiress of Boulogne and wife of King Stephen who took charge of his cause after his capture at Lincoln in 1141, won back London from Empress Matilda, routed the empress's army at Winchester and exchanged the captured Robert of Gloucester for her husband.
Matilda of Boulogne was the heiress of Count Eustace III of Boulogne, brother of Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin I of Jerusalem, and of Mary of Scotland, sister of Henry I of England's queen. Around 1125 she married the king's favourite nephew, Stephen of Blois, and when Eustace retired to a monastery that year she became countess of Boulogne in her own right. Stephen governed Boulogne as count in her right, but the county and its English estates were her inheritance.
Matilda became queen when Stephen seized the English throne in December 1135 and was crowned at Westminster in March 1136. In the civil war against her cousin Empress Matilda she proved an able commander and negotiator: after Stephen was captured at Lincoln in February 1141 she rallied his supporters, won over the Londoners, who drove out the empress, and exchanged the captured Robert of Gloucester for the king. Chroniclers on both sides spoke well of her, and Stephen's modern biographers credit her with saving his crown.
Matilda was born around 1105, the only legitimate child of Eustace III and Mary, daughter of Malcolm III of Scotland. Her father had fought on the First Crusade beside his brothers, and in 1118 he set out to claim the throne of Jerusalem after the death of Baldwin I of Jerusalem, turning back when he heard that Baldwin II of Jerusalem had been chosen. She probably spent much of her childhood in England, where her aunt was queen, and may have been educated at Wilton Abbey; her mother died at Bermondsey in 1116.
Henry I of England arranged her marriage to Stephen around 1125, giving his nephew control of Boulogne and Wissant, the best harbours for the short crossing to Kent, and of her family's English estates centred on Colchester. Their children included Eustace, born around 1127, Baldwin and a daughter who both died young, William and Mary.
No letters by Matilda survive, so her character has to be read from her actions and from chroniclers who were rarely neutral. The author of the Gesta Stephani, a strong supporter of Stephen, praised her as a woman of subtlety with a man's resolution and described her bearing herself with a man's courage in 1141. More striking is the silence of writers sympathetic to the empress, such as William of Malmesbury, who did not criticise her either; their disapproval was kept for the empress's pride and harshness in London.
Modern historians have explained the contrast. Matilda acted in the name of her husband and son, pleaded before she fought and took counsel from her barons, so her boldness fitted what twelfth-century writers expected of a good queen, while the empress, acting on her own claim, was judged more harshly. Her religious life shows another side. She was close to Bernard of Clairvaux, who wrote that he considered one of her sons partly his own after she came through a dangerous pregnancy, and she favoured the Templars and the reformed Savigniac monks.
Matilda was crowned queen at Westminster on 22 March 1136. When rebellion broke out in 1138 after Robert of Gloucester renounced his allegiance, she besieged Dover by land while ships from Boulogne blockaded the harbour, and the castle surrendered to her that summer. Later that year she worked with the papal legate Alberic of Ostia to make peace with her uncle David I of Scotland, whose army had been beaten at the Battle of the Standard, and she saw the Treaty of Durham agreed on 9 April 1139, which gave David's son Henry the earldom of Northumbria.
In 1140 she went to France and arranged the marriage of her son Eustace to Constance, sister of Louis VII of France, strengthening Stephen's ties with the French crown.
Stephen was captured at the battle of Lincoln on 2 February 1141 and imprisoned at Bristol. The queen withdrew from the Tower of London to Kent and made it the base of the royalist party, with the Flemish captain William of Ypres. Stephen's brother Henry, the papal legate, went over to the empress, and at a council at Winchester in April the clergy accepted the empress as lady of the English; a clerk read out the queen's letter begging them to restore her husband, but it was set aside.
The empress entered London in June and demanded money from the citizens, while the queen's army ravaged the country south of the Thames. On 24 June, as the empress was about to dine at Westminster, the Londoners rang the bells, took up arms and opened the gates to the queen's troops, and the empress fled to Oxford. Matilda then won back Bishop Henry, and when the empress besieged him at Winchester the queen and William of Ypres surrounded the besiegers. The empress's army broke out on 14 September and was routed, and Robert of Gloucester was captured at Stockbridge. After weeks of bargaining with Robert's wife, Countess Mabel, the queen exchanged him for Stephen, who was freed on 1 November 1141.
At Christmas 1141 Matilda wore her crown beside Stephen at Canterbury, and afterwards she returned to the role of counsellor, though she still governed the honour of Boulogne and raised money and troops in her county. She founded Templar houses at Cressing and Cowley, joined Stephen in founding Coggeshall Abbey for the Savigniacs, established the hospital of Saint Katharine by the Tower and, from 1148, built Faversham Abbey in Kent for Cluniac monks as the family's burial church. In April 1152 she attended the council in London at which Stephen tried and failed to have the bishops crown Eustace as king.