‘Empress Matilda’ by Elisabeth van Houts review

Empress Matilda (1102-67) was a redoubtable woman; twice married and twice widowed, she spent years trying to succeed her father King Henry I in England and in Normandy. At the age of eight in 1109 she was sent from England to Germany for marriage in 1114 to the western emperor Henry V. When widowed in 1125 she returned to England to be caught up in her father’s plans for his succession. Henry I had lost his only legitimate son in the wreck of the White Ship in 1120, the Titanic of the 12th century. The king remarried, but this second marriage was and remained childless, so his attention turned to his daughter, the empress, as a prospective successor. He wanted to ensure that the succession should not pass either to his elder brother, Robert, his prisoner since 1106, or the latter’s son William. Nor was there any thought that his nephew Stephen of Blois or his eldest illegitimate son Robert, earl of Gloucester should inherit the throne. Accordingly, oaths of loyalty as Henry’s successor should he not have a son were sworn to Matilda in 1127. She was then dispatched to Normandy to be betrothed to Geoffrey, son of the count of Anjou, a teenager almost ten years her junior. The following year Geoffrey was ceremonially knighted by Henry I, and the pair were married. The marriage initially failed – perhaps unsurprisingly, as the pair were mismatched in age and rank – and Matilda returned to her father. However, the marriage remained important, for the alliance with Anjou as well as the succession, so the oath of loyalty was renewed, and she was sent back to get on with the job. The couple produced three sons, the first in 1133, the second the following year, and the third in 1136.

However, when Henry died in 1135 Stephen of Blois crossed the Channel and, despite the oaths made to Matilda, secured a speedy coronation while Matilda was only able to secure her dowry castles in Normandy. In 1139 she returned to England to assert her claim to the throne, leading to a prolonged conflict, now known as the Anarchy, the time ‘when Christ and his saints slept’ according to one commentator. The most critical year of the war was 1141 when Stephen was captured in the battle of Lincoln and Robert at Stockbridge in Hampshire. Once freed Stephen besieged Matilda, who had taken refuge in Oxford castle. Her escape became famous. It was said that she exited through a postern gate over the snow dressed in white for camouflage, and made her way on foot to Abingdon. The war became a stalemate and, as time went on, it became clear that the best prospect of success rested with her son Henry, who would indeed become Henry II in 1154. She left England for good in 1148 and spent her retirement until her death in 1167 living at Quevilly (not Queville as van Houts writes) near Rouen, a formidable figure still, who advised Henry he was mistaken in his handling of Thomas Becket.

This engaging new biography weaves its way through the complicated politics of the period but never loses sight of Matilda the woman in a man’s world. The sources, especially those dealing with the civil war, are far from impartial. Van Houts’ interpretation is generally sound, but on one key issue it is possible to differ. Matilda’s claim to succeed her father rested on the oaths of loyalty taken by an array of magnates, Henry’s childless second wife Queen Adeliza, and his brother-in-law David king of Scots and earl of Huntingdon. Van Houts points out that no objection to Matilda’s sex was recorded, but that in 1135 the magnates, ignoring their oaths, turned instead to male candidates. We might ask, however, whether the oaths were ever really going to guarantee Matilda’s peaceful accession, and whether they were a high-risk strategy by an ageing king? Even though there was no son from the king’s second marriage, there were still formidable obstacles to Matilda’s succession. One was the question of Normandy, where many of the magnates had considerable estates. In 1127 many regarded Robert Curthose, Henry’s captive elder brother, as the rightful duke of Normandy. Although his son William died in 1128, Robert did not die until 1134, so his supporters would be bound to resist Henry’s successor. Equally problematic was that when the magnates first took the oath, they did not know the identity of Matilda’s second husband. Not only was he an outsider and an Angevin but, according to contemporary custom, he would expect to have real power as her husband in both territories, and this surely would have been a deterrence.

Another knotty issue is Matilda’s status in England. Van Houts sees her as an uncrowned queen regnant, like Lady Jane Grey in the 16th century, but the evidence is thin. It seems that the best Matilda could achieve was ‘Lady of the English’. She seems to have preferred ‘Empress’, in her charters and seal, even though technically she had not been crowned by the pope. Moreover, when her representatives appealed to Rome on two occasions for her claim to the throne to be recognised, she failed.

This was an era when personality really did matter in politics. Extricating Matilda’s personality from often hostile commentaries by chroniclers supporting King Stephen is no easy task, but how far did Matilda’s shortcomings contribute to her difficulties? She was not conciliatory, a failing seen, for instance, when negotiating with the Londoners, whose support, coming from the richest and politically most important city, had been crucial for Stephen at the time of his accession. In 1141 the Londoners rose against Matilda, spurred on by Stephen’s able queen (another Matilda), and she fled, never to return. Matilda was brave, intelligent, and resilient: she was pregnant, for instance, when news of her father’s death reached her and yet she travelled to Normandy to secure her castles. She was also pious, keeping a special affection for the Norman abbey of Bec where she was buried. This sympathetic biography is particularly good at exploring the social constraints under which Matilda as a woman operated and deserves a wide readership.

• Empress Matilda: Queen of the Romans, Ruler of the English 
  Elisabeth van Houts 
  Yale University Press, 423pp, £30
  Buy from bookshop.org (affiliate link)

Judith Green is Professor Emeritus, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, at the University of Edinburgh.