Thomas Becket. Father John S. Hogan

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      With passengers in such high spirits, the ship was ready to set off at high speed. One passenger, however, was getting nervous: Stephen of Blois, William’s cousin. Catching a whiff of the wind and the unruly celebrations on board, he excused himself and disembarked — a ship sailing at top speed with a well-oiled crew and a wild party in full swing seemed too much like tempting fate. He and a few companions would set sail on a more sober vessel. One contemporary historian maintains that Stephen was actually struck with a case of diarrhea and needed urgent relief, which was unobtainable at that particular moment on the White Ship, so he quietly excused himself.⁶ No matter whether Stephen’s departure was in response to a premonition or to afflicted bowels, it changed the course of history.

      It was after midnight when the ship weighed anchor and, at full speed, launched headlong into the bay to the cheers of its intoxicated passengers, three hundred in all. Determined to race the other vessels to England as the captain had promised, all sails unfurled to catch the full force of the wind, and the crew drove the ship toward the channel and right onto the Quillebeuf, a submerged rock at the mouth of the harbor, tearing an enormous hole in the prow. Water poured into the ship, and as a quickly sobering crew desperately attempted to bail it out, panic broke out among the passengers. Those with their wits about them realized that few might survive this disaster, and one of them must be the heir to the throne. As passengers fell into the icy waters, inebriated and unable to swim, their fine, thick clothes pulling them down into the depths, a single lifeboat was launched with a small crew to take William back to shore.

      Whatever his state, William showed some courage and chivalry. As he looked back at the sinking ship, he spied his half-sister Matilda desperately treading water and about to go under. She was screaming for her life, and William could not ignore her. He ordered the boat back to pick her up. As they approached her, other desperate souls attempted to scramble onboard, causing the lifeboat to capsize, and William, Duke of Normandy, heir to the throne of England, was tossed into the icy waters and disappeared down into the abyss. For all his efforts, Matilda also drowned, as did their brother Richard and everyone else except one man: a butcher from Rouen who had stepped onboard ship to collect monies owed to him and had been waylaid by the revelers.⁷ He had a lucky escape, but England and Normandy did not.

      When news reached King Henry I, he was distraught. His heir was dead; who would succeed him? The dynasty was now on shaky ground. Stephen of Blois, stepping safely off his boat in England, was one candidate; he was Henry’s nephew, his closest legitimate male relative. Another possible heir was William’s elder half-sister, another Matilda (Henry would call four of his daughters Matilda).⁸ The eldest and only legitimate daughter of King Henry I and his first wife, Matilda of Scotland, this Matilda was the wife of the king of Germany and Holy Roman emperor, Henry V. She was now the heir apparent, but given that she was a woman, this was not apparent to all, and certainly not to Stephen. Henry had another child, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, who was capable enough to assume the crown, but he was illegitimate, born of an affair the king had had with a woman from Oxfordshire. Indeed, Robert was the eldest of twenty-two illegitimate children Henry had sired with numerous women, several others of whom also came from Oxfordshire. The king would not prove so fortunate in the childbearing stakes with his wives, not even with his new teenaged wife, Adeliza of Louvain, whom he married just weeks after the tragedy. She bore him no children, though she later bore seven children for the Earl of Arundel, whom she married in her widowhood. Robert of Gloucester was accomplished, but the stigma of illegitimacy would be too much for the barons to accept, though many of them had brought unacknowledged children into the world through extramarital affairs.

      King Henry concluded that the succession would have to fall to Matilda. In 1120, she was eighteen years old and celebrating the tenth anniversary of her marriage to the Holy Roman emperor Henry V. Sadly, that marriage had not produced any children; her husband would die in 1125 without an heir. Henry then called his daughter, who had no role in the empire, back to England. As it was then obvious that Adeliza was not going to bear him a son, the king realized that he had to ensure that Matilda’s accession to the throne would be as painless as possible; to do so he would have to bind his barons to an oath. Oaths in the Middle Ages were of supreme gravity; their witness was God himself, and breaking an oath was considered a serious offense against God.

      At Christmas 1126, Henry summoned the barons to court. Enthroned with his daughter at his side, he called the barons forward and received from each of them an oath of allegiance to Matilda — to uphold her claim to the throne upon Henry’s death and to do all that was necessary to ensure a secure succession. Among those who took the oath was Stephen of Blois. Forcing the barons to take this oath was an extraordinary measure, and some found it most irregular, as Stephen would maintain later in his effort to legitimize his claim to the throne. Female sovereigns were not a good idea, many of the barons complained among themselves — they brought instability and weakness to a dynasty, perhaps even war. Even if he resented the grumbling, Henry was not immune to the opinions being voiced behind his back. If Matilda was to have any chance to hold on to the throne, she would need a strong husband to assert her rights, and so the king arranged a match with Geoffrey, nicknamed “Plantegenest,”⁹ then the eldest son of the Count of Anjou. He was an adept and ambitious man, and even if love never blossomed between the two, the prospect of being consort to a powerful queen would keep the young man onside.

      Matilda and Geoffrey were married on June 17, 1128.¹⁰ When the twenty-six-year-old bride saw the groom, she was not impressed. Eleven years her junior, he was lanky, ginger-haired, giddy, and bursting with energy; he also liked to wear a flower in his hair.¹¹ Matilda was a much more sober character, imperious and dismissive, and she found much to dismiss in her new consort. To celebrate the marriage, Geoffrey’s father, Fulk, abdicated as Count of Anjou and went to the Holy Land to assume the crown of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Geoffrey was now count, so at least Matilda was consort to a ruler. However, this was no boon to Matilda; she detested Anjou and regarded her new husband’s family as nothing short of murdering savages. The marriage did not start well, and it continued as it began, with arguments.¹² Soon after their espousal, the couple separated and would remain apart for five years. Still worried about the future of his dynasty, Henry first counseled and then threatened the couple to fulfill their conjugal and dynastic duty. The couple would do so on at least three occasions, bringing three sons into the world. The first was born on March 5, 1133, and he was called after the man he was destined to succeed: Henry.

      Henry I could not have been described as a doting grandfather, but he was a happy and relieved one: He had a male heir to follow on from his daughter. In June of the following year, the spare arrived — Geoffrey — and an emergency heir would arrive in July 1136: William. However, the days were growing short for Henry. In November 1135, he arrived at one of his hunting lodges in Normandy for a few weeks of sport before Christmas, but he fell ill the next day — it was said that he was afflicted with food poisoning after eating lampreys against his doctor’s advice. He was not to recover; he died on December 1 with his son Robert by his side. His remains were prepared for burial — his entrails interred at a local priory and his embalmed body transported back to England to be buried at Reading Abbey.¹³

      Henry seems to have died in peace. The succession was settled. Matilda was secure because his faithful barons would ensure that she was crowned and would reign in relative peace until Henry II was ready to ascend the throne, be it on her death or on her abdication, whichever was deemed more politically expedient. However, neither course of action was deemed expedient by many, and there was one who was keen to throw all of Henry’s plans to the wind and plant himself on the throne of England: Stephen of Blois. Trouble was about to begin in earnest.

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