Editing Stephen, King of England (section)

=== Road to civil war (1139) ===
[[File:Great Seal of King Stephen.jpg|thumb|upright=1.8|Stephen's [[Great Seal of the Realm|Great Seal]]]]

Stephen prepared for the [[Angevin Empire|Angevin]] invasion by creating a number of additional [[List of earldoms|earldoms]].<ref>Bradbury, p. 52.</ref> Only a handful of earldoms had existed under Henry I and these had been largely symbolic in nature. Stephen created many more, filling them with men he considered to be loyal, capable military commanders, and in the more vulnerable parts of the country assigning them new lands and additional executive powers.<ref>Bradbury, p. 70.</ref>{{#tag:ref|R. Davis and W. L. Warren argue that the typical earldom involved the delegation of considerable royal powers; Keith Stringer and Judith Green capture the current consensus that the degree of delegated powers followed the degree of threat and that perhaps less powers in total were delegated than once thought.<ref>White (2000), pp. 76–77.</ref>|group="nb"}} He appears to have had several objectives in mind, including both ensuring the loyalty of his key supporters by granting them these honours, and improving his defences in key parts of the kingdom. Stephen was heavily influenced by his principal advisor, Waleran de Beaumont. Waleran, his brothers [[Robert de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Leicester|Robert]] and [[Hugh de Beaumont, 1st Earl of Bedford|Hugh]], and their younger cousins received the majority of these new earldoms.<ref>Barlow, pp. 171–172; Crouch (1986), p. 29.</ref> From 1138 onwards, Stephen gave them the earldoms of [[Earl of Worcester|Worcester]], [[Earl of Leicester|Leicester]], [[Earl of Hereford|Hereford]], [[Earl of Warwick|Warwick]] and [[Earl of Pembroke|Pembroke]], which – especially when combined with the possessions of Stephen's new ally, Prince Henry, in Cumberland and Northumbria – created a wide block of territory to act as a [[buffer zone]] between the troubled south-west, [[Chester]], and the rest of the kingdom.<ref>Barlow, p. 172.</ref> With their new lands, the power of the Beamounts grew to the point where David Crouch suggests that it became "dangerous to be anything other than a friend of Waleran" at Stephen's court.<ref>Crouch (1986), p. 43.</ref>

Stephen took steps to remove a group of bishops he regarded as a threat to his rule. The royal administration under Henry I had been headed by Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, who was supported by his nephews, Bishops [[Alexander of Lincoln]] and [[Nigel of Ely]], and his son, Lord Chancellor [[Roger le Poer]].<ref>Davis, p. 31.</ref> These bishops were powerful landowners as well as ecclesiastical rulers, and they had begun to build new castles and increase the size of their military forces, leading Stephen to suspect that they were about to defect to the Empress Matilda. Bishop Roger and his family were also enemies of Waleran, who disliked their control of the royal administration. In June 1139, Stephen held his court in Oxford, where a fight between [[Alan, 1st Earl of Richmond|Alan of Brittany]] and Roger's men broke out, an incident probably deliberately created by Stephen.<ref name="DavisP32">Davis, p. 32.</ref> Stephen responded by demanding that Roger and the other bishops surrender all of their castles in England. This threat was backed up by the arrest of the bishops, with the exception of Nigel who had taken refuge in [[Devizes Castle]]; the bishop only surrendered after Stephen besieged the castle and threatened to execute Roger le Poer.<ref>Yoshitake, p. 98.</ref> The remaining castles were then surrendered to the King.<ref name=DavisP32/>{{#tag:ref|The impact of these arrests on the efficacy of the subsequent royal administration and the loyalty of the wider English church has been much discussed. Kenji Yoshitake represents the current academic consensus when he notes that the impact of the arrests "was not serious", placing the beginning of the disintegration of the royal government at the subsequent battle of Lincoln.<ref>Yoshitake, pp. 97–98, 108–109.</ref>|group="nb"}}

Stephen's brother Henry was alarmed by this, both as a matter of principle, since Stephen had previously agreed in 1135 to respect the freedoms of the church, and more pragmatically because he himself had recently built six castles and had no desire to be treated in the same way.<ref name="BarlowP173">Barlow, p. 173.</ref> As the papal legate, he summoned the King to appear before an ecclesiastical council to answer for the arrests and seizure of property. Henry asserted the church's right to investigate and judge all charges against members of the clergy.<ref name=BarlowP173/> Stephen sent [[Aubrey de Vere II]] as his spokesman to the council, who argued that Roger of Salisbury had been arrested not as a bishop, but rather in his role as a baron who had been preparing to change his support to the Empress Matilda. The King was supported by [[Hugh of Amiens]], [[Archbishop of Rouen]], who challenged the bishops to show how [[canon law]] entitled them to build or hold castles. Aubrey threatened that Stephen would complain to the pope that he was being harassed by the English church, and the council let the matter rest following an unsuccessful appeal to Rome.<ref name=BarlowP173/> The incident successfully removed any military threat from the bishops, but it may have damaged Stephen's relationship with the senior clergy, and in particular with his brother Henry.<ref>Davis, p. 34; Barlow, p. 173.</ref>{{#tag:ref|Keith Stringer argues that Stephen "was surely right" to seize the castles, and that the act was a "calculated display of royal masterfulness"; Jim Bradbury and Frank Barlow praise the military soundness of the tactic. David Carpenter and R. Davis, however, observe that Stephen had ended up breaking his promises to the Church, was forced to appear before a church court, and damaged his relationship with Henry of Blois, which would have grave implications in 1141.<ref>Stringer, p. 20; Bradbury, p. 61; Davis, p. 35; Barlow, p. 173; Carpenter, p. 170.</ref>|group="nb"}}