The early years of Stephen's reign were largely successful, despite a series of attacks on his possessions in England and Normandy by David I of Scotland, Welsh rebels, and the Empress Matilda's husband Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou.

The King tried to convince the church to agree to crown Eustace to reinforce his claim; Pope Eugene III refused, and Stephen found himself in a sequence of increasingly bitter arguments with his senior clergy.

[10] Unusually, Stephen was raised in his mother's household rather than being sent to a close relative; he was taught Latin and riding, and was educated in recent history and Biblical stories by his tutor, William the Norman.

[26] Matilda claimed the title of Holy Roman Empress through her marriage to Emperor Henry V, but her husband died in 1125, and she was remarried in 1128 to Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, whose lands bordered the Duchy of Normandy.

[39] His wife, Matilda, played a major role in running their vast English estates, which contributed to the couple being the second-richest lay household in the country after the King and Queen.

From the 1040s onwards, however, successive popes had put forward a reforming message that emphasised the importance of the church being "governed more coherently and more hierarchically from the centre" and established "its own sphere of authority and jurisdiction, separate from and independent of that of the lay ruler", in the words of historian Richard Huscroft.

[50] On 15 December, Henry delivered an agreement under which Stephen would grant extensive freedoms and liberties to the church, in exchange for the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Papal Legate supporting his succession to the throne.

He stabilised the northern border with Scotland, contained Geoffrey's attacks on Normandy, was at peace with Louis VI, enjoyed good relations with the church and had the broad support of his barons.

[94][nb 12] Anglo-Norman warfare during the reign of Stephen was characterised by attritional military campaigns, in which commanders tried to seize key enemy castles in order to allow them to take control of their adversaries' territory and ultimately win a slow, strategic victory.

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.

[109] 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.

[113] 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.

[116][nb 16] The Empress stayed at Arundel Castle, whilst Robert marched north-west to Wallingford and Bristol, hoping to raise support for the rebellion and to link up with Miles of Gloucester, a capable military leader who took the opportunity to renounce his fealty to the King.

[123] Although there had been few new defections to the Empress, his enemies now controlled a compact block of territory stretching out from Gloucester and Bristol south-west into Devon and Cornwall, west into the Welsh Marches and east as far as Oxford and Wallingford, threatening London.

[133] Stephen returned to London but received news that Ranulf, his brother and their family were relaxing in Lincoln Castle with a minimal guard force, a ripe target for a surprise attack of his own.

[135] Robert and Ranulf's forces had superiority in cavalry and Stephen dismounted many of his own knights to form a solid infantry block; he joined them himself, fighting on foot in the battle.

[138] Many of his supporters, including Waleran de Beaumont and William of Ypres, fled from the field at this point but Stephen fought on, defending himself first with his sword and then, when that broke, with a borrowed battle axe.

[143] Stephen agreed that, given the situation, he was prepared to release his subjects from their oath of fealty to him, and the clergy gathered again in Winchester after Easter to declare the Empress "Lady of England and Normandy" as a precursor to her coronation.

[145] When Matilda advanced to London in an effort to stage her coronation in June, though, she faced an uprising by the local citizens in support of Stephen that forced her to flee to Oxford, uncrowned.

[158] Possibly this illness was the result of his imprisonment the previous year, but he finally recovered and travelled north to raise new forces and to successfully convince Ranulf of Chester to change sides once again.

[171] In the west, Robert of Gloucester and his followers continued to raid the surrounding royalist territories, and Wallingford Castle remained a secure Angevin stronghold, too close to London for comfort.

[182] Some parts of the country, though, were barely touched by the conflict—for example, Stephen's lands in the south-east and the Angevin heartlands around Gloucester and Bristol were largely unaffected, and David I ruled his territories in the north of England effectively.

[184] The character of the conflict in England gradually began to shift; as historian Frank Barlow suggests, by the late 1140s "the civil war was over", barring the occasional outbreak of fighting.

[209] In the face of the increasingly wintry weather, Stephen agreed to a temporary truce and returned to London, leaving Henry to travel north through the Midlands where the powerful Robert de Beaumont, Earl of Leicester, announced his support for the Angevin cause.

Stephen lost the towns of Oxford and Stamford to Henry while the King was diverted fighting Hugh Bigod in the east of England, but Nottingham Castle survived an Angevin attempt to capture it.

[222] After a busy summer in 1154, however, Stephen travelled to Dover to meet Thierry, Count of Flanders; some historians believe that the King was already ill and preparing to settle his family affairs.

[241][nb 24] The late-Victorian scholar Frederic William Maitland also introduced the possibility that Stephen's reign marked a turning point in English legal history—the so-called "tenurial crisis".

Historian R. H. C. Davis's influential biography paints a picture of a weak king: a capable military leader in the field, full of activity and pleasant, but "beneath the surface ... mistrustful and sly", with a poor strategic judgement that ultimately undermined his reign.

[244] Stephen's lack of sound policy judgement and his mishandling of international affairs, leading to the loss of Normandy and his consequent inability to win the civil war in England, are also highlighted by another of his biographers, David Crouch.

[245] Historian and biographer Edmund King, whilst painting a slightly more positive picture than Davis, also concludes that Stephen, while a stoic, pious and genial leader, was also rarely, if ever, his own man, usually relying upon stronger characters such as his wife Matilda and brother Henry.