090 



STEPHEN (OF ENGLAND). 



STEPHEN, BATHORI. 



C96 



ambitious prelate, whom the pope, at the instigation of Theobald, 

 archbishop of Canterbury, had deprived of his office of legate, sought 

 to avenge himself on the primate by the aid of the royal authority. 

 Matters proceeded so far that Theobald at last published a sentence 

 of interdict, the first of which this country had ever been the object, 

 against all the dominions of the English king ; and Stephen, assailed 

 by the cries of the alarmed people, found himself forced to yield. 

 But his last and worst antagonist now appeared in the person of 

 Matilda's son Henry, who, having by the death of his father, in Sep- 

 tember 1151, become Earl of Anjou, and having soon after .added to 

 his paternal dominions the territories of Poitou and Aquitaiue by bis 

 marriage with Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis VII. of France, 

 landed at Wareham, on the 6th of January 1153, at the head of a 

 force of only 3000 foot and 140 knights, which however was soon 

 augmented by the j unction of considerable numbers of his mother's 

 friends. Yet no swords were crossed by these rival claimants of the 

 same crown. Henry having forced his way into the town of Malmes- 

 bury, lay there, while the Avon, rendered impassable by the rains, 

 prevented Stephen from attacking him. Stephen then retired to 

 London, on which Henry advanced to VVallingford ; but when Stephen 

 had also marched to this point, and both parties were preparing for 

 battle, the principal persons in the two armies, at the suggestion of 

 the Earl of Arundel, interfered, and an agreement was made, by which 

 the effusion of blood was prevented, and which was confirmed in a 

 great council held at Winchester in November following. By this 

 compact, Stephen, whose eldest son Eustace, fortunately for the peace 

 of his country, died suddenly at Canterbury during the negociation, 

 having been seized, it is said, with fever and phrenzy, while he sat at 

 table, constituted Henry, whom he styled duke of Normandy, " his 

 successor in the kingdom of England, and his heir by hereditary 

 right." Henry in the meantime did homage and swore fealty to 

 Stephen ; Stephen's surviving son William did homage to Henry, and 

 received from him a grant of all the lands and honours held by his 

 father before his accession to the throne ; and, lastly, the bishops and 

 abbots, the earls and barons, and the inhabitants of all the boroughs 

 in the kingdom, swore fealty to both the king and the duke. One of 

 the most strenuous supporters of this arrangement was the Bishop of 

 Winchester. Stephen survived its ratification not quite a year ; he 

 died suddenly in a convent at Dover, on the 25th of October 1154, 

 being in the fiftieth year of his age, and having reigned nineteen years 

 all but two months. [HENRY II.] 



England during the whole reign of Stephen was probably in a state 

 of greater anarchy and misery than it had ever known since the first 

 settlement of the Saxons, or has ever experienced in the worst of the 

 intestine wars and confusions of which it has since been the theatre. 

 Indeed the country appears to have got far back towards barbarism. 

 " In this king's time," says the Saxon Chronicle, " all was dissension, 

 and evil, and rapine. . . . Thou mightest go a whole day's journey, 

 and not find a man sitting in a town, nor an acre of land tilled. The 

 poor died of hunger ; and those who had been men well to do begged 

 for bread. Never was more mischief done by heathen invaders. . . . 

 To till the ground was to plough the sands of the sea. This lasted the 

 nineteen years that Stephen was king, and it grew continually worse 

 and worse." 



Yet Stephen personally appears to have had many qualities which 

 would have adorned a throne more fortunately circumstanced. The 

 party zeal of the old historians has given very opposite representations 

 of his character ; but his general conduct, and the best or most impar- 

 tial authorities, bear out what has been said of him by Stow : " This 

 was a noble man and hardy, of passing comely favour and personage : 

 he excelled in martial policy, gentleness, and liberality towards all 

 men, especially in the beginning ; and, although he had continual war, 

 yet did he never burthen his commons with exactions." His valour 

 and clemency indeed, as well as the beauty of his person, are admitted 

 on all hands, and are attested by the whole of his career, and by many 

 remarkable incidents. He is especially spoken of in terms of the 

 warmest eulogy by one contemporary writer the author of the Life 

 of St. Cuthbert, lately printed by the Surtees Society, 'Reginald! 

 Monachi Dunelmensis Libellus de Admirandis Beati Cuthberti Virtu- 

 tibus,' 8vo, Lon., 1835. See his 64th chapter. 



By his queen Matilda, who died May 3, 1151, Stephen had the fol- 

 lowing sons and daughters : 1, Baldwin, who died in infancy ; 2, 

 Eustace, after his father's acquisition of the crown styled Earl of Bou- 

 logne, who was born in 1125, married in 1140 Constance, daughter of 

 Louis VI. and sister of Louis VII. of France (afterwards the wife of 

 Raymond III., earl of Toulouse), and, as already mentioned, died 10th 

 of August, 1153, without issue; 3, William, Avho married Isabel, 

 daughter and heiress of William, earl of Warren and Surrey (after- 

 wards the wife of Hamlyn Plantagenet, natural son of Geoffroy, earl 

 of Anjou), became Earl of Mortagne and Boulogne after the death of 

 his elder brother, and died without issue in October 1160 ; 4, Maud, 

 who died in childhood ; 5, Mary, who, after becoming a nun and 

 abbess of the nunnery of Ronisey in Hampshire, succeeded, on the 

 death of her brother William, to his honours of Boulogne and Mor- 

 tagne, and some years afterwards married Matthew, son of Theodoric 

 of Alsace, earl of Flanders, with whom she lived ten years, and was 

 then (in 1189) divorced by the pope and sent back to her convent, 

 after having borne Matthew two daughters, the youngest of whom 



Maud, through her granddaughter Elizabeth, the wife of Albert I., 

 duke of Brunswick, is among the ancestors of the present English royal 

 family. Two natural sons are also attributed to Stephen : William, 

 of whom nothing is known except the name ; and Gervai.*, by a lady 

 named Daneta, made by his father abbot of Westminster, which 

 dignity he held till his death August 26th, 1160. Stephen's youngest 

 brother Henry, the bishop of Winchester, who figures so conspicuously 

 throughout the reign, died August 6th, 1171. 



The chief contemporary chroniclers of the time of Stephen are 

 the writers of the ' Saxon Chronicle,' the anonymous author of the 

 ' Gesta Stephani ' (published in Duchesne), Richard, prior of Hexhani 

 (Hagulstadensis), Serlo, and Ailred, abbot of Rivault (all in Twysden's 

 'Decem Scriptores '), William of Malmesbury, and Henry of Hunting- 

 don. Many additional facts are also mentioned by Ralph de Diccto, 

 Brompton, Gervas of Canterbury, and other later writers. 



STEPHEN, BATHORI, one of the most remarkable individuals of 

 the 16th century, and the greatest king that Poland ever had. He was 

 born in 1533 at Shomlo iu Hungary, of an old and noble family of 

 that country. The agitated state in which his native land continued 

 during the 16th century being torn by domestic factions, and troubled 

 by the Turks and the Austriaus, presented a vast field for the display 

 of great talents, united to a daring and adventurous character, and 

 Stephen Bathori rose after many vicissitudes to the sovereignty of 

 Transylvania in 1571. In 1575 he was elected to the throne of Poland, 

 vacant by the flight of Henry of Valois (Henry III. of France) ; and 

 he owed this elevation to the renown of his valour and wisdom. He 

 took possession of the crown ; married, according to the conditions of 

 his election, the Princess Anca Jaguellon, sister to the deceased king 

 Sigismund Augustus ; repressed by his vigour the party which sup- 

 ported his competitor Maximilian of Austria ; and pacified the country 

 by conciliatory measures. 



After having regulated the internal affairs of the country, he settled 

 its foreign relations in a satisfactory manner, particularly by ensuring 

 the friendship of the Sultan of Turkey. He then turned his attention 

 towards Muscovy. This power had recently obtained an extraordinary 

 developement under the celebrated Ivan Vasilovich, who invaded u 

 part of Livonia belonging to Poland, shortly after the accession of 

 Stephen. His first care was to organise a military force adt quate to 

 encounter such a formidable enemy, and to secure at the same time 

 the tranquillity of the borders. He formed the Cossaks of the Ukraine 

 into a regular force, allowing them the choice of their own hetman or 

 supreme commander, and conferring on them many advantages as a 

 reward for the services which they were obliged to perform. The 

 castles were repaired and provided with permanent garrisons ; a 

 formidable ordnance was created j and a body of life-guards and a 

 regular infantry were organised. 



Having completed his military preparations, he took the field in the 

 summer of 1579 with a numerous army composed of national troops, 

 German mercenaries, and five thousand Hungarians, commanded by 

 Bekesh. Bekesh, a countryman of Bathori, had been his enemy and 

 competitor for the throne of Transylvania, but finally, struck with 

 admiration of the superior qualities of Bathori, he disclaimed his 

 enmity and requested the honour of serving under his command. 

 These sentiments were fully responded to by Bathori, who placed in 

 his former enemy an unlimited confidence, which Bekesh justified by 

 his services. 



On commencing the campaign, Bathori issued a proclamation to the 

 people of Muscovy, declaring that he was making war against their 

 tyrannical sovereign, and not against them, and promising protection 

 to their lives and property. The Russian historians bear evidence 

 that this promise was strictly fulfilled, and that this campaign was 

 free from all those atrocities by which war was usually accompanied in 

 those times. The Muscovites were defeated in several battles. Polotzk 

 was taken after a desperate resistance ; but the garrison and inhabi- 

 tants were spared by the conqueror, who immediately granted to the 

 town the liberties enjoyed by the cities of Poland, and the same pri- 

 vileges and security to the Greek church which he had enjoyed under 

 the dominion of Moscow. Having restored that important place to 

 Poland, from which it had been taken several years before, he obtained 

 some other advantages during the same campaign, and returned in 

 the winter to Warsaw to attend the diet, which received him with 

 great enthusiasm, and willingly granted the necessary means for the 

 continuation of the war. Bathori resumed it with great vigour in 

 the summer of 1580 ; the town of Veliki Luki and several others 

 were taken ; and in the next year, 1581, the city of Plescow was 

 besieged by Zamoyski, one of the greatest statesmen and warriors that 

 Poland had produced [ZAMOYSKI], and to whom Bathori had entrusted 

 the command of the army. The progress of the Polish arms was 

 arrested, and the fruits of so many triumphs were destroyed, by the 

 intrigue of the Jesuit Possevinus, who, deceived by the promises of 

 the czar Ivan Basilovich to acknowledge the supremacy of the pope, 

 induced Stephen Bathori to conclude peace with Muscovy on the 6th 

 of January 1582, by which the Polish conquests were restored to the 

 czar, with the exception of Polotzk and a few other towns and castles. 

 Bathori employed the interval of peace in introducing different im- 

 provements, and was making preparations for another war with 

 Muscovy, the dangers of which his policy could easily foresee. The 

 pope, Sixtus V., deceived by the czar, who as soon as the danger was 



