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"It was a dreadful thing," said the chronicler, William of Malmesbury, "that England, once the noblest place of peace, the peculiar habitation of tranquillity, had sunk to such wretchedness." But out of that wretchedness would come the moment of Matilda's greatest triumph. In February 1141, in vicious fighting at Lincoln, troops loyal to Matilda defeated Stephens' army and took the king prisoner. It had been five years since her father's death but now the throne was within her reach for the first time. Now Matilda knew she needed the church and the people to recognise her as Queen. She couldn't undo Stephen's coronation but she could try to supersede it with one of her own. And she found an unlikely ally in the man who had orchestrated Stephen's coronation, his own brother, Bishop Henry of Winchester. |
