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the throne that London first assumed that constitutional position which it has retained for so many centuries since. The struggles of the great city against Cnut, her capitulation with William, the charters she wrested from the Conqueror and his son, are enough to prove her importance at an earlier date than this; but with her part in this Revolution begins that peculiar individual influence which she was to exercise on our national history. The London of the great Charter, of the great Remonstrance, of the Bill of Rights, appears first in the London of Stephen.

The last of the Norman kings died as the first December night of 1135 began to darken: “On midwinter day," says the Chronicle, four-and-twenty days after, that is, Stephen received the Crown from the Archbishop's hands. Short, however, as the interval was, it was long enough for an outburst of anarchy, which proved but too true an omen of the days to come. The very rigour of the dead king's rule intensified the outburst; common-law, forest-law, alike broke down the exile, the disinherited, re-entered their possessions: old feuds, crushed beneath the stern justice of "the Peace-loving King," broke out anew. In the midst of the turmoil, Earl Stephen, Henry's nephew, crossed with a fair wind from Wissant, and landed at early dawn amid terrible thunder and lightning, strange in such winter weather. Repulsed at Dover, shut out from Canterbury, he rode with what speed he might over the frost-bitten fields straight to London. Scant as his train was, his aim was the Crown. The design had not sprung, as his partisans

afterwards affirmed, from the news of his uncle's death: ever since the great storm of popular anger which had followed the announcement of the marriage of King Henry's daughter Matilda, the heiress of England, if oaths went for anything, with the Count of Anjou,* the thought of Stephen's accession had been familiar to English minds. Nor had he neglected to back this popular expectation by the formation of a Blesine party pledged to support his claim; among the nobles of England many had already sworn friendship to him or to his brothers. His claim as nearest male heir of the Conqueror's blood, strengthened now by the marriage of his only rival to the most hated of foreigners, was supported by his personal popularity. He had been the darling of his uncle Henry; and, mere swordsman as he was, his good humour, his generosity, his very prodigality, made him a favourite with all. Nor were more solemn sanctions wanting to the popular enthusiasm; hermits were the truest expression of the religious life of the twelfth century, and the most famous of living English hermits had already saluted him as king. Against the walls of the little Dorsetshire village-church of Haselberg leant the miserable shanty, where, vexed by fevers and macerations, a gaunt solitary waged his battle against the enemy of souls. Originally a hunting parson, Ulric had all at once flung aside his hounds and his vicarage, and, without waiting for episcopal sanction or priestly benediction, had immured himself in this

* Sax. Chronicle ad annum 1127.

† Gesta Stephani, p. 6 (Histor. Society's edition).

jealously closed cell. The fame of his sanctity spread far and wide. Men told how, within the narrow walls, Ulric was being buffeted, scourged, dragged about by infuriate demons; how unearthly lights, flitting from church to cell, told of the visits of angelic comforters. The monks of Montacute furnished him with bread from their cellar; merchants of Bristol tossed uneasily beneath their furs as they thought of the hermit's night-long vigil in the icy waters of his brook, and sent him their costly coverlet on the morrow. Soon he was known as England's one miracle-worker and prophet: bold invectives against the wrong-doer, gentle exhortations to better things came through the closed shutter of the hermit's cell to the ears of courtier and king, for even Henry had turned out of his way to visit him. It was the shrill cry of this solitary that arrested Stephen as he rode with his brother Henry past the hermitage. "Hail, King," shouted Ulric from his pent-house; and Stephen, imagining the hermit had mistaken him for his royal uncle, drew bridle to explain. "It is no error," persisted the hermit, "it is you, Stephen, that I mean; for the Lord hath delivered the realm into your hand;" and then he prayed him, when that day should come, to protect the Church and defend the poor.*

In spite, however, of expectation, intrigue, and prophecy, Stephen's enterprise was still a failure when he appeared before the gates of the capital. No noble had joined the scanty train of Flammands and Nor

Acta Sanctorum Bolland, iii. 226.

mans that followed him; no town had opened its gates. All hung on the decision of London; nor was it long uncertain what that decision would be. No sooner was the little troop in sight, than London poured out to meet it with uproarious welcome. By the side of the earl's charger, as they led him into the city, men leaped for joy in shouting how they had gotten "another Henry in Stephen." *

Somewhat of the warmth of this reception sprang, doubtless, from the need of a ruler, which London, more than all England, experienced. For the great mourning with which the city had received the news of Henry's death had been roughly interrupted by an event which recalled its own immediate peril. Just without the walls, a knight, who had occupied an inferior position in Henry's court, had availed himself of the interruption of the king's peace to gather a troop of marauders at his back, and to levy blackmail on the country round. The traders could see the pillage of their wains as they wound along the banks of the Thames, or struck eastward along the great white road over good Queen Maud's bridge at Stratford; they could see the smoke and flame rising from their pleasant country houses along the valley of the Fleet. With pillage at her gates, London wanted no far-off Lady, but a present King. "Every realm," the burghers urged in their folk-mote, "was open to mishap where the presence of all rule and head of justice was lacking. Delay was impossible in the election of a king, who was needed at once to restore justice and *Gesta Steph. p. 3.

the law."

But the present danger only quickened feelings which had their root in the very history of London under the Conquest.

The Conquest had left London as free as it found it its franchises remained as great under William as they had been under Edward. But it had planted in the very heart of the city, or, if not planted, had raised into far higher importance a wholly new element of civic life. London presents a strong contrast to most other great mercantile cities in the readiness she has ever shown, not only to admit, but to admit to full citizenship, the foreign elements which different ages have introduced. Englishman, Dane,

Norman, Gascon, the stream of Flemish immigration flowing steadily from the Conquest on to the accession of the Stuarts, Germans of the Palatinate, Huguenots of Southern France, have clustered century after century round the old Roman Municipium. Long before the landing of William, the Normans had had mercantile establishments in London. In the Institutes drawn up under Ethelred the men of Rouen occupy a special position, inferior only to that of the men of the Emperor. But for the Conquest, however, their settlement would have remained a mere trading colony, such as the Hanse merchants for centuries after maintained in their London Steel-yard. Up to the Conquest, indeed, the position of the "Emperor's men" was even higher than that of the "men of Rouen," and had Henry V. annexed England, as at one time seemed possible, in right of his wife, the mer

Gest. Steph. pp. 3, 4.

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