Magna Carta Blog, Part 3: The Anarchy Edition

Today's topic is The Anarchy, a war in English history following the reign of King Henry I, the king who succeeded William the Conqueror. The trouble began when in 1120, when the only legitimate son of King Henry I died in a shipwreck, leaving the aging King Henry with no heir to succeed him. Despite his best efforts, Henry I was unable to produce another heir before he died in 1135 and the resulting civil war wreaked havoc across England. The two sides in the war were those loyal to King Stephen, a nephew of Henry I who proclaimed himself King of England when his uncle died, and those who were loyal to Empress Matilda, a daughter of Henry I and widow of Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, Empress Matilda was Henry I's choice as his heir when he was on his deathbed, though she was at a bit of a disadvantage when it came to obtaining the loyalty of the English barons due to being a woman in a time when woman almost never had any real power. In the early years of his reign King Stephen spent much of his time fighting rebels and invading scotsmen and in 1139 Empress Matilda gathered an army and invaded England. The war dragged on with neither side gaining much of an advantage over the other for over 10 years. Since both sides had easily defensible castles, legions of mercenaries as well as the facts that English barons kept switching between supporting Stephen and Matilda (Of particular note is John Marshal, who started out supporting Stephen and ended up supporting Matilda and who was the father of William Marshal, a famous knight who I have written about previously on this blog) and that there was rampant lawlessness, which gave the war it's name, the war didn't end until 1953, when both sides finally ran out of steam and agreed to a truce. The truce provided peace on the terms that Stephen's heir would be Matilda's son Henry. When Stephen died of unrelated causes the next year Matilda's son became King Henry II, whose children would go on to be key figures in the time of the Magna Carta.