STEPHEN III. (OF HUNGARY). 



STEPHEN (OF ENGLAND). 



692 



Palanka. When peace was restored, Stephen adopted Bela, the son of 

 his relative Amos, who had been obliged to seek protection at the 

 court of Constantinople, and resigned in his favour in 1 

 then entered a monastery, and died at Waradin, in the thirty-first 

 year of his age. 



STEPHEN III. was crowned king of Hungary in 1161, under 

 unfavourable circumstances, arising from the influence which the 

 emperor of Constantinople had exercised over Hungary during the 

 reign of bis father. Although Stephen had legitimate claims to the 

 throne, and was generally beloved by the Hungarian nobles, the 

 Emperor Manuel did not approve of his spirit of independence, and 

 signified to the Hungarians that unless they elected Ladislaus, the 

 brother of the late king, he would invade the country. Ladislaus had 

 been brought up at the Byzantine court, and had the Greek interest 

 much more at heart than the Hungarian. Terrified by the approach 

 of a formidable army, the Hungarian nobles elected Ladislaus, who 

 however died in 1161. 



STEPHEN IV. On the death of Ladislaus, Stephen IV. was forced 

 upon the Hungarians by the Emperor Manuel ; though no man could 

 be less acceptable to them than the debauched uncle of the unfor- 

 tunate Stephen III. A revolt soon compelled him to seek refuge at 

 the court of his patron, and the lawful king, Stephen III., was un- 

 animously re-elected. During the usurpation of his uncle, Stephen 

 lived under the protection of the archbishop of Gan, Luke Banfi. 

 Manuel seemed to approve of the newly elected king, and gave his 

 daughter in marriage to Bela, the brother of Stephen, on condition 

 that the prince should live at Constantinople. Stephen agreed to this; 

 but upon the arrival of Bela at Constantinople, the emperor claimed 

 his heritage, which consisted of Dalmatia. Stephen refused to 

 admit his claim ; whereupon his uncle, Stephen IV., re-appeared at 

 the instigation of Manuel, and commenced hostilities. He was how- 

 ever defeated in a battle by his nephew, and obliged to fly to Seinlin, 

 where he died in 1163. Soon after his death Semlin was taken, the 

 kingdom cleared of the partisans of the Greek cause, and in an expe- 

 dition into Dalmatia, which was conducted by Stephen himself, in 

 1165, this province was recovered from the Lands of Manuel. But 

 whilst engaged in the western part of his kingdom, a Greek army 

 appeared in Hungary. Stephen went to meet it ; and a decisive battle, 

 in which the Hungarians were defeated, secured the influence of 

 Greece in Hungary. Stephen III. died in 1173, and was succeeded by 

 his brother Bela III. 



STEPHEN V., kiug of Hungary, succeeded his father Bela in 1270, 

 and began his reign by a war against Ottocar, king of the Bohemians, 

 whom he defeated. A subsequent campaign against the Bulgarians was 

 crowned with success ; but the course of his victories was interrupted 

 by his death, which occurred in 1272. This king is sometimes called 

 Stephen IV. by those who do not recognise the usurper of that name. 



(Thwrocz, Chronica Ifungarorum ; llanzanus, Epitome rerum Hun- 

 garicarum Decades Qttatttor; Maildth, Geschichte der Mayyaren.) 



STEPHEN, king of England, born in 1105, was the third of the 

 four sons of Stephen, earl of Blois, by Adela, daughter of William 

 the Conqueror ; and was consequently nephew of Henry I., cousin to 

 that king's daughter the Empress Matilda, and second cousin to 

 Matilda's son, who became king of England as Henry II. Having 

 been early brought over to England by his uncle Henry I., that king, 

 with whom he became a great favourite, besides bestowing upon him 

 several valuable estates here, made him earl of Mortagne in Nor- 

 mandy. Dr. Lingard says that Stephen " had earned by his valour 

 in the field of Tenchebrai the Norman earldom of Mortoil." (' Hist, of 

 Engl.,' L 158). But when the battle of Tenchebrai was fought, in 1106 

 [HENRY I. vol. iii. col. 353.], Stephen was only about a twelvemonth old. 

 Henry also procured for him a marriage with Matilda, the daughter and 

 heiress of Eustace, earl of Boulogne (younger brother of the famous 

 Godfrey and Baldwin, king of Jerusalem), by which he acquired that 

 earldom, and also a new alliance with the royal families both of Eng- 

 land and Scotland, for tho mother of Matilda of Boulogne was Maria, 

 daughter of Malcolm Canmoro, and a younger sister of Henry's queen 

 Matilda (the good queen Maud). As Stephen therefore was the 

 nephew of Henry I., so his wife was the niece of Henry's queen ; and 

 by this match the issue of Stephen, as well as the issue of Henry, might 

 boast of Inheriting the blood of the old Saxon royal family, as being 

 equally sprung from Malcolm's queen Margaret, the sister of Edgar 

 Atheling, a circumstance by no means without influence in the conten- 

 tions of the two lines. 



When Henry, after the loss of his son and the failure of issue by 

 hia second wife, determined upon securing the succession to the crown 

 for his daughter the Empress Matilda, the two individuals upon 

 whom he appears to have principally relied for the support of that 

 arrangement were his natural son Robert, earl of Gloucester, and his 

 nephew Stephen. It is not improbable that both may have meditated 

 the attempt which Stephen actually made, and that, if the orowu upon 

 Henry's death had not been seized by him, it might have been clutched 

 at by Gloucester. The notions of that age were by no means so settled 

 in favour of legitimate birth as to have prevented the son of thn late 

 king, although illegitimate, from having a fair chance in such a com- 

 petition against his nephew. 



Perhaps Henry himself was not without his fears of one or both. 

 He muet have t'elt at least that the existence of two males BO nearly 



connected with the royal house, and distinguished both for military 

 talent and popular manners, tended to make still more precarious the 

 success of his novel project of a woman-king, a thing opposed to all 

 the notions and habits of the Gothic nations, and (if we except tho 

 single instance of a wife of one of the kings of the West Saxons, who 

 is said to have retained the government in her hands for a year after 

 the death of her husband, and then to have been expelled with dis- 

 dain by the nobles, who would not fight under a woman) unexampled 

 either in England, or in France, or in Normandy, or in the kingdom 

 of Denmark and Norway, whence the Normans came. At the same 

 time it was obviously much better for Matilda that she should have 

 two such near male relations than if she had only one ; seeing that, 

 if she had to fear a rival in one of them, she might count with equal 

 certainty upon having a defender in the other. But that which after 

 all gave her the best chance was the circumstance of her having had 

 the good fortune to give birth to a son a few years before her father's 

 death. Indeed she had borne two sous to her second husband before 

 her father died. Had it not been for these lucky accidents it may be 

 doubted if all her father's provident arrangements would have secured 

 the recognition of Matilda's pretensions for a moment after the throne 

 became vacant. But for the existence of the infant Henry of Anjou, 

 or of his younger brother, at the time of his grandfather's death, the 

 crown might probably have been Stephen's without striking a blow 

 unless there had ensued a fight for it between him and his cousin 

 Gloucester. 



In 1125, immediately after the death of her first husband the 

 Emperor Henry V. (whom she was suspected of having made away 

 with), Henry had sent for his daughter to Normandy, and, having the 

 next year brought her over to England, he collected all the chief per- 

 sons of the realm about him at Windsor while he kept his Christinas, 

 and, having there by presents arid promises engaged those among 

 them of greatest influence to support his views, he came to London, 

 and, having proposed the matter in a council consisting of the arch- 

 bishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and all the thanes, obtained, in the 

 beginning, of January 1127, though not, says Malruesbury, without 

 great and long deliberation, the unanimous promise of the assembly, 

 that, if he should die without male issue, they would receive Matilda 

 as Ma successor. Every individual present who seemed to be of any 

 note quicunque in eodem concilio alicujus, videbatur esse momcnti 

 (to adhere to Malmesbury's remarkable expression) took a solemn 

 oath to that effect : first, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the otlier 

 bishops and abbots ; then the King of Scotland on account of the fiefs 

 he held of the English crown ; then Stephen, earl of Boulogne and 

 Mortagne ; then the Earl of Gloucester ; then the other barons. A 

 few months after this Matilda was married to Geoffrey Plantagenet, 

 the son of the Earl of Anjou; and in the year 1131, when she was in 

 England, having already quarrelled with her husband, the oath of 

 fealty to her was again taken by the bishops and nobility at a grand 

 council held at Northampton ; and two years after, ou the birth of 

 Matilda's first son Henry, it was once more renewed, in a council held 

 at Oxford, both to her and to her son. 



Nevertheless, as soon as Henry had expired in Normandy, December 

 1st, 1135, Stephen, who, as well as Gloucester, had been for some time 

 in attendance on the dying king, instantly set out for England, and 

 taking ship at Whitsand, near Calais, the usual port of embarkation, 

 landed on the coast of Kent. It appears that, foreseeing his uncle's 

 decease, he had already secured the support of a powerful faction of 

 the clergy and nobility, by means of his younger brother Henry, who, 

 having also stood high in the favour of the late king, had been placed 

 by him in the bishopric of Winchester, and had succeeded in winning 

 over to his brother's interest the most influential subject in the king- 

 dom, Roger, bishop of Salisbury, who, as grand justiciary, was the 

 supreme governor of the realm during the vacancy of the throne. Of 

 Stephen's two elder brothers, it may be here mentioned that William, 

 the eldest, was almost an idiot, and that the other, Theobald, had 

 succeeded to his father's earldom of Blois ; so that Stephen, in aspiring 

 to the English crown, did not find either of them in his way. The 

 politic and zealous management of his brother Henry had also gained 

 for him the support of William de Pont de 1'Arcne, who held the 

 castle of Winchester and the key of the royal treasures deposited 

 there. The consequence was, that although Stephen was refused 

 admission by the inhabitants both of Dover and of Canterbury, ho 

 was received with warm welcome by those of London and Winchester; 

 and after Hugh Bigot, earl of Norfolk, the steward of the royal 

 household, had, to remove the scruples, real or affected, of some of 

 his adherents, boldly sworn that Henry on his deathbed had disin- 

 herited his daughter and her issue, and left the crown to his nephew, 

 it was resolved by the clergy and nobility who had gathered about 

 him that he should be crowned forthwith, and the ceremony was 

 accordingly performed at Westminster on the 26th of December, St. 

 Stephen's-day, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by the 

 bishops of Salisbury and Winchester. The commencement of tho 

 reign of Stephen is reckoned from that day. 



At his coronation Stephen swore, 1, That on all occasions of 

 episcopal vacancies he would appoint a new prelate within a certain 

 time, and meanwhile would leave the temporalities of the see in the 

 charge of some ecclesiastic ; 2, That he would make no addition to 

 the royal forests, but would, on the contrary, restore to their owners 



