King of England (1135–1154), grandson of William the Conqueror, whose seizure of the throne over the Empress Matilda plunged England into the civil war known as the Anarchy.
Stephen was king of England from 1135 to 1154, and his reign is remembered as "the Anarchy". A grandson of William the Conqueror through his mother Adela, and a favoured nephew of Henry I, he had sworn to uphold Henry's daughter Matilda as heir — but on the old king's death he crossed to England, seized the treasury, and had himself crowned.
His usurpation was challenged by Matilda and her half-brother Robert of Gloucester, and from 1139 England was torn by a long, grinding civil war in which, as the chronicler put it, "Christ and his saints slept". Stephen was even captured and briefly deposed after the Battle of Lincoln in 1141. Neither side could win outright, and the war ended only in 1153, when Stephen — his own son having died — agreed that Matilda's son Henry of Anjou should succeed him. Stephen died the next year.
Stephen was born about 1096 at Blois, the son of Count Stephen of Blois and Adela, a daughter of William the Conqueror. Raised at the court of his uncle Henry I, he was showered with lands and titles, becoming one of the greatest magnates of England and Normandy and count of Boulogne by marriage. Like the other magnates, he had sworn to accept Henry's daughter Matilda as heir to the throne.
When Henry I died in December 1135, Stephen acted at once. He crossed the Channel, secured the royal treasury at Winchester, and — with the support of much of the Church and baronage, who preferred him to a female ruler and her Angevin husband — was crowned king within weeks.
Stephen was, by wide agreement, a brave, affable, and personally likeable man — generous, courageous in battle, and courteous even to enemies — who nonetheless made a poor king. His very mildness and inconstancy undid him: he was too ready to make concessions, too quick to trust and to forgive, and lacked the ruthless authority his uncle Henry I had wielded to hold the barons in check.
The chroniclers lamented that a man of such personal virtues should have brought such misery on the land. He could win a battle but not a peace, gain a rival's submission and then squander it, and his good nature repeatedly let enemies slip through his hands. He is remembered as the well-meaning king whose weakness allowed the aristocracy to run wild and the kingdom to dissolve into anarchy.
Stephen's seizure of the crown was contested from the start. In 1139 the Empress Matilda landed in England to press her claim, supported by her half-brother Robert of Gloucester, and the country split into warring camps of barons who exploited the conflict to build private power. In 1141 Stephen was defeated and captured at the Battle of Lincoln, and for a few months Matilda held the upper hand — though she was never crowned — before he was exchanged and restored.
The war dragged on for over a decade without a decisive result, as royal authority collapsed and, in the chronicler's famous words, men said openly that "Christ and his saints slept". Castles multiplied, the coinage failed, and the country suffered grievously.
The deadlock broke through exhaustion and dynastic accident. In 1153 Matilda's son, Henry of Anjou, invaded and campaigned to a standstill against Stephen; and the death that year of Stephen's own son and heir, Eustace, removed his reason to fight on. By the Treaty of Wallingford, Stephen recognised Henry as his heir, keeping the crown for his own lifetime. He died on 25 October 1154, and Henry succeeded peacefully as Henry II.
Stephen is remembered as the king of the Anarchy, whose disputed reign became a byword for the breakdown of royal authority and the miseries of civil war. A likeable man and a poor ruler, he presided over the near-dissolution of the strong monarchy Henry I had built. Yet the settlement that ended his reign brought to the throne his rival's son, Henry II, founder of the Plantagenet dynasty, who would rebuild royal power on new foundations — so that the Anarchy became the dark prelude to one of the great ages of English kingship.