1142 siege during the Anarchy
Illustration of Oxford Castle based on a 16th-century woodcut
The siege of Oxford took place during
, and also not far from London.
By now the civil war was at its height, yet neither party was able to get an edge on the other: both had suffered swings of fate in the last few years which had alternately put them ahead, and then behind, their rival. Stephen, for instance, had been captured by Matilda's army in 1141, but later in the year, Matilda's half-brother and chief military commander,
Robert, Earl of Gloucester
was captured by Stephen's army. Likewise, Matilda had been recognised as "Lady of the English" but had not long afterwards been run out of London.
Stephen believed that all it would take to win the war decisively would be to capture Matilda herself; her escape to Oxford seemed to present him with such an opportunity. Having raised a large army in the north, he returned south and attacked Wareham in Dorset; this port town was important to Matilda's Angevin party as it provided one of the few direct links to the continent that they controlled. He attacked and captured more towns as he returned to the Thames Valley , and soon the only significant base Matilda had outside of the south-west—apart from Oxford itself—was at Wallingford Castle , held by her close supporter Brian Fitz Count .
Stephen's army approached Oxford in late September 1142, and according to contemporary accounts, swam his army across the rivers and waterways that blocked the approach to the city. Matilda's small force was taken by surprise. Those that were not killed or captured retreated into the castle; Stephen now controlled the city, which protected him from counterattack. The king knew he was unlikely to be able to take the castle by force—although that did not stop him from using the latest siege technology . He also knew that it would be a long, hard wait before Matilda was starved out. But after nearly three months of siege, conditions for the garrison were dire, and they formed a plan to help the Empress escape from under Stephen's nose. One early December evening Matilda crept out of a postern door in the wall—or, more romantically, possibly shinned down on a rope out of St George's Tower—dressed in white as camouflage against the snow and passed without capture through Stephen's lines. She escaped to Wallingford and then to Abingdon , where she was safe; Oxford Castle surrendered to Stephen the following day, and the war continued punctuated by a series of sieges for the next 11 years.
Background
Matilda—approached
Southwark from
Kent . The Empress Matilda—"in great state", reported
James Dixon Mackenzie —evacuated to Oxford in 1141,
[note 3] making it her headquarters and setting up her
Mint .
[note 4] Prior to her eviction from Westminster, she had made some political gains, having captured King Stephen and been recognised as "the Lady of the English". Although Matilda never matched the King in wealth, both sides' armies probably ranged in size from 5,000 to 7,000 men.
Oxford
Oxford itself had become increasingly important by this period, and, in the words of historian
royal demesne.
[note 6] Oxford's relative proximity to the capital, suggests Bradbury, also made it a "brave move" on her part; it probably also indicates that she did not wish to move too far and that she intended to return to, and reclaim, London in due course.
Matilda recognised that her lack of resources meant that she could not bring the war to a decisive close at this point, and so she sent her half-brother, Robert, Earl of Gloucester , to her husband, the Count of Anjou , to try to bring him and his large, experienced army in on her side. Matilda and the earl probably assumed that she would be safe in Oxford until he returned. This was a crucial period for Matilda, says King, and Gloucester's absence weakened her force further: he left for Normandy on 24 June to negotiate with Anjou, despite, says Crouch, Matilda's situation being "desperate". However, she considered Oxford to be her "own town", commented the 17th-century antiquarian Samuel Daniel . Stephen had recently been so ill that it was feared, temporarily, that he was dying; this created a degree of popular sympathy for him, which had already welled up following his release from Matilda's captivity the previous November.[note 7] A. L. Poole described the train of events thus:
At the Christmas [1141] festival, celebrated at Canterbury, Stephen submitted to a second coronation, or at least wore his crown, as a token that he once again ruled over England. The affairs of the kingdom, a visit to York, and an illness, so serious that it was rumoured that he was dying, prevented the king from taking steps to complete the overthrow of his rival who remained unmolested at Oxford. It was not till June that he was sufficiently recovered to take the field.
— A. L. Poole
Matilda and Gloucester, on the other hand, did not know that he was on the road to recovery; if they had, suggests R. H. C. Davis , they might not have delayed or even cancelled his journey. However, they did not, and Matilda's army was effectively left leaderless. Matilda may have been expecting supporters to make their way to Oxford—"to 'make fine' with her" (i.e. to contract themselves to her cause), suggests Edmund King—"but they were under no compulsion to do so". It is likely, says Professor H. A. Cronne , that by now "the tide had turned and already men were quietly leaving her court". John Appleby, too, has suggested that much of her support had by now decided that, in his words, they had "bet on the wrong horse", particularly as she had failed to put up a stand at Westminster or immediately return in force. Stephen, on the other hand, had recuperated in the north of England; he had a solid base of support there and was able to raise a large army—possibly over 1,000 knights—before returning south.
The siege
King Stephen, in a 13th-century illustration by Matthew Paris
Following Stephen's recovery, says the author of the anti-Angevin Gesta , the King acted like a man "awakened as out of sleep".
Stephen arrived at the river bank looking over to Oxford on the evening of 26 September 1142:
Stephen's primary objective in besieging Oxford was the capture of the Empress rather than the city or castle itself,
This same year the king besieged the empress at Oxford, from after the feast of Michaelmas [29 September], until the advent of our Lord [29 November]; but during that period (sometime about Christmas-tide) the Empress escaped by night and crossed the Thames, which at that time was frozen over. She had dressed in white, and thus avoided the observation of the besiegers, the ground being covered with snow at the time. She went to Wareng [Wallingford], and so at length, Oxford surrendered to the king.
The Chronicle of Robert de Monte
Stephen did not hesitate.
In December the Earl of Gloucester returned to England, bringing with him a force of between 300 and 400 men and knights in 52 ships. In a sop to Matilda's demands, the Count had allowed her nine-year-old son Henry to accompany the earl. His mission to bring the Count and his army to England had been a failure. Anjou had refused to leave Normandy or make any attempt to rescue his wife; perhaps, says Cronne, "it was just as well he did, for the English barons would certainly have regarded him as an unwelcome intruder".[note 20] On Gloucester's return he placed Wareham under siege, probably hoping that Stephen would raise his siege at Oxford and come to the relief of Wareham; but if it was a bait, Stephen—perfectly aware of his advantageous position in Oxford—did not take it.
Matilda's escape
St George's Tower, Oxford Castle, in 2007
For the second time in the war, Stephen almost succeeded in capturing Matilda, but for the second time also, failed in the attempt.
Having made "the last and most remarkable of her escapes", says King, Matilda and her companions made their way—or "fled ignominiously", he suggests—to Abingdon where they collected horses and supplies, and then further to Wallingford, where they could rely on the support of Fitz Count, and where they met up with Gloucester. Stephen, meanwhile, took advantage of Gloucester's presence in Wallingford to make an (unsuccessful) attempt to recapture Wareham, which the earl had refortified after recapturing it.
Aftermath
[Matilda's] reputation went before her. The Empress of the Romans, the daughter of the mighty Henry, the Lady of the English, was now reduced to the ranks of the ladies who lunched.
Edmund King
Oxford has been described as Stephen's "key target"
Matilda made her way to Devizes Castle , where she was to spend the rest of her campaign in England, and young Henry—whose role was to provide "some small measure of male legitimacy to his mother's struggle", suggested Martin Aurell —spent the next few months in Bristol Castle before returning to his father in France. Many of those that had lost lands in the regions held by the king travelled west to take up patronage from Matilda. With the end of the siege of Oxford, says Stringer, the military situation became generally static, "and would remain thus until the end of the war", which was to continue, in Cronne's words, as a "chess-like war of castle sieges".[note 28] Both sides were, and continued to be, crippled by a combination of the massive cost of warfare and inefficient methods of raising revenue.[note 29] Matilda left England in 1148; Stephen died in 1154, and, under the terms of the Treaty of Wallingford signed the previous year, Henry, Duke of Normandy, ascended the English throne as King Henry II.
Notes
Geoffrey, Count of Anjou.
John Round to coin the term "the Anarchy" to describe the period. Later historians criticised the term, however, as analysis of the financial records and other documents from the period suggested that the actual breakdown in law and order during the conflict had been more nuanced and localised than chronicler accounts alone might have suggested. Further work in the 1990s reinterpreted Henry's efforts in the post-war reconstruction period, suggesting a greater level of continuity with Stephen's wartime government than had previously been supposed. The label of "the Anarchy" remains in use by modern historians, but rarely without qualification.
^ King suggests that Oxford's proximity to Wallingford was also influential on her choice; her father had had a hunting lodge , and had effectively retired there. She may also have been influenced by the fact that one of her supporters, Brian Fitz Count , held Wallingford Castle .
pennies he produced for her were never minted outside the areas directly under her control. Minting money was not, at this time, solely the purview of the crown; it was not unusual for barons to also do so, the most illustrious example of such being Matilda's half-brother, the Earl of Gloucester.
^ King, discussing the approach of the Gesta 's author, writes that he "liked to provide a thumbnail sketch of each settlement [that he came to] and he writes in what now would be thought of as estate agents' prose".
^ She had, after all, says Chibnall, not only to pay the wages of her soldiery and the overall costs of the campaign, but also to compensate, as best she could, those of her supporters who had had estates confiscated by the King.
^ Stephen had been captured at the battle of Lincoln on 2 February 1141. Although Stephen appears originally to have been kept in relatively good conditions, sympathy arose at least partly because it was suspected that he had been maltreated while in captivity. The Gesta Stephani described the King as living in a "narrow dungeon", and he may have been fettered in chains; although William of Malmesbury asserts that Gloucester had due regard for the "splendour of the crown". Matilda, in any case, was "irretrievably damaged" politically as a result. Stephen was eventually released after the Rout of Winchester on 4 September 1142, at which Robert of Gloucester was captured and subsequently exchanged for the King.
Bishop of Bath, "but, whoever he was, he was certainly a partisan of Stephen's".
^ Both Stephen and Matilda's armies are unknown quantities; however, when Henry landed in 1153, William of Newburgh says that he had 3,000 knights, which in turn Crouch describes as modest for the period, although he also presents reasons why the chronicler's estimate could have been inflated.
^ Wareham was of particular strategic significance, as it was held by the Earl of Gloucester; he had sailed from Wareham port on his voyage to Normandy, and, says Crouch, Stephen's victory denied Gloucester his easiest point of return to England. It was also of general strategic importance, argues Chibnall, because the Angevin party needed a secure port to connect them to the continent.
^ Along with Wallingford, Oxford was also the most easterly point of the salient representing Angevin influence, which was concentrated in the south-west of England, and along with Woodstock Castle , Cirencester, Rampton and Bampton, formed a front line.
Horace Round compares the manner of Stephen's crossing here—"half-fording, half-swimming"—as predating a similar situation at the
Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
Horace Round speculated that she may well have witnessed the
rout of her army from the castle
ramparts .
^ This was not uncommon; notwithstanding the political significance of Matilda specifically, castellans were often the target of a siege. In Matilda's case, Stephen's task was made all the more difficult by Matilda's gender: says Helen Castor , "if Matilda's sex denied her the benefits of military leadership, it also protected her from the dangers of war. However great Stephen's triumphs, this was one enemy who would never be killed or captured in combat",
^ In any case, sieges were the usual method of prosecuting this war; William of Malmesbury noted—and complained—that "the whole year was troubled by the brutalities of war. There were many castles all over England, each defending its own district, or, to be more truthful, plundering it. The war, indeed, was one of sieges. Some of the castellans wavered in their allegiance, hesitating which side to support, and sometimes working entirely for their own profit".
^ Kings Richard I and John were later born in this palace in 1157 and 1167 respectively.
^ These are still to be seen on maps of later centuries (e.g. that of 1578), but had been built over by the 18th century.
^ Building small counter-castles was a favoured tactic of King Stephen during the civil war. When a castle was too powerful to be overcome in the short term, a siege castle need only be garrisoned by a small force, but could still wear down the garrison and prevent them from foraging at will, and allowed Stephen to keep the bulk of his army together where he needed it.
^ Marjory Chibnall has described Wallingford as the Empress' "bastion in the Thames Valley" and as "impregnable [and] supported by vassals who were throughout the years of war as unshakably loyal to him as [FitzCount] himself was to his lady. Besieged on several occasions, the castle never fell to Stephen's forces. Such conduct was exceptional; as the rivals manoeuvred for position there were many who hesitated between them".
^ R. H. C. Davis has suggested that Anjou, who had requested that Gloucester come to him, as the only member of Matilda's circle he knew and therefore trusted to negotiate with, had never had any intention of coming to England. But, says, Davis, Anjou's military campaign in Normandy was stalling, and Gloucester's personal presence in the Count's Angevin army would improve Anjou's credentials to the Norman baronage, whom he was attempting to persuade to transfer their allegiance to him.
^ The previous year Matilda had again only narrowly escaped capture by the King's forces at the Battle of Winchester . At Oxford, though, says Crouch "matters were even more desperate...There was no Earl of Gloucester or Earl of Hereford to mastermind her escape and protect it with a rearguard action".
^ Crouch posits that they were very likely disillusioned—"the exhaustion and lethargy that eventually undermines any civil war"
^ Author Richard Brooks has suggested that the royal army "refused to await an Angevin relief column gathering at Cirencester". The historian Richard Barber says that "Robert, once he had achieved his immediate object and made the coast secure for a possible retreat, moved north to Cirencester with Henry, and assembled forces with which to march to the relief of Oxford. But Matilda decided that more urgent action was required".
typecast Matilda but also, occasionally, sources sympathetic to her report similar characteristics, although "more obliquely", such as those described by
Frank Barlow : "arrogance sharpebned by humiliation and intransigence heightened by failure were fatal to her cause".
^ Matilda's escape was caricatured by Sellar and Yeatman in their 1930 book, 1066 and All That that "after this Stephen and Matilda (or Maud) spent the reign escaping from each other over the snow in night-gowns while 'God and his Angels slept'".
^ Gloucester had recaptured Wareham after a three-week siege, during which he allowed the besieged to send to the King for assistance. However, "Stephen was too much occupied with the siege of Oxford, and no relief came", says A. L. Poole . Gloucester was not able to begin rebuilding the Angevin army until December, following his eventual recapture of Cirencester,
^ This is likely, says Crouch, because although contemporaries knew of Matilda's vow, there was confusion as to where she had supposedly made it. Monks at La Valasse Abbey were under the impression that she made it escaping Oxford, while, for example, the monks of Mortemer Abbey thought it was as a result of surviving a shipwreck. Crouch says that the most likely reason for this confusion is that she "invented the story for the occasion",
^ Although it was a war of sieges, these took different forms. Sometimes castles and towns were besieged as one (such as Bristol in 1138 and Wallingford the following year), although more often than not the castle resisted after the town had fallen, as at Winchester and Lincoln in 1141 and Oxford the following year. The reason castles were of such continuous significance, says Davis, was that both sides were short of money: since neither Stephen nor Matilda possessed the resources with to which to conquer and then hold great swathes of land, they had to focus their efforts towards controlling regional political loci. According to Keith Stringer, "the technology of defence had outstripped that of attack", and so besiegers often found themselves bogged down in fighting a small war at every town they beset.
^ The Norman methods of taxation, still in use in the late 12th century have been described by W. L. Warren as "the greatest failure of Norman government".
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