The Anarchy

December 1135. King Henry I eats a dish his doctor had forbidden him, and within a week he is dead. The barons had sworn twice to accept his daughter as their ruler. But Matilda is far away in Anjou, and nobody sends for her.

Across the Channel, Stephen of Blois makes a dash for the crown. The gates of Dover are shut against him, but London cheers him in. His brother delivers the royal treasury at Winchester, and a timely claim about the old king’s dying words clears his path to the throne.

In this episode, we follow the race for England’s crown, and we hear the gruesome fate of the old king’s body. We also ask why the barons broke their oath.

On New Year’s Day 1127, the great men of England knelt before King Henry I. They swore that his daughter would rule after him. No woman had ever ruled England in her own right.

In this episode, we follow Matilda’s extraordinary early life. Sent to Germany at the age of eight to marry the most powerful man in Christendom, she was crowned queen as a child. She was governing in Italy by sixteen. When her husband died, she came home as the Empress.

We meet the men who would decide her fate: her charming cousin Stephen and her half-brother Robert of Gloucester. We also meet the teenage husband she couldn’t stand, Geoffrey of Anjou.

Two oaths are sworn. Both will be broken.

November 1120. The court of King Henry I gathers at Barfleur to sail home after a hard-won peace. The wine flows, the priests are jeered off the quay, and the finest ship in the fleet rows out into the dark, towards a rock nobody sees.

In this episode, we go back to William the Conqueror’s three quarrelling sons. We follow how Henry seized the throne in three days, and why he kept his own brother prisoner for twenty-eight years. Then we board the White Ship, meet the heir who was meant to inherit it all, and hear the story of the butcher who lived to tell the tale. Along the way, we sort out the many Matildas.

And we meet a young man named Stephen, who decided at the last minute to stay ashore.

In 1120, the White Ship struck a rock off the coast of Normandy. Among the dead was the only legitimate son of King Henry I, and with him went England’s peace.

This introduction sets the scene for The Anarchy, the bitter civil war between Stephen and the Empress Matilda for the English crown.

Meet the main players: a charming usurper king, a formidable empress, a half-brother who could never be king but could decide who was, and a queen who saved her husband’s cause.