In the 12th century, Eustace, the eldest son of King Stephen of England, had every reason to hope he would be the next person to rule. However, his father’s reign was troubled and Eustace’s life did not go how he envisioned. In this episode of Footnoting History you will learn all about this medieval prince who never wore the crown. Hey everyone, Christine here. I’m excited to talk to you about one of my favorite, and most recurring, themes: men who hoped to become king
but never did so. In this case, we’re looking to the mid-12th century, in England, and the man in question is Eustace, the eldest surviving son of King Stephen and his wife, Matilda of Boulogne. If you’re listening to this episode and would like to have it captioned, know that we have every episode
fully captioned on both our YouTube channel and FootnotingHistory.com. Also, if you’re interested in becoming a patron and receiving access to minisodes and big quarterly fun newsletters while helping us keep the podcast running, you can get more info at FootnotingHistory.com/Donate. Thank you to all who listen and support us! Now then, Eustace. The man at the center of today’s episode was probably born in 1129 or 1130. At the time of his birth, Eustace was not likely
to be the heir to the throne of England. His parents were based in what is now France, where they were Count and Countess of Boulogne. In fact, the name Eustace was likely chosen because of its prominence in their Boulogne-based family line, emphasizing the strong ties to this region where his parents were extremely high ranking. Eustace had two younger siblings, a brother named William
and a sister called Marie. The family’s tie to the crown of England came from the fact that Eustace’s father, Stephen, was the nephew–but definitely not the heir–of the current king, Henry I. In 1135, when Eustace was roughly five years old, his life changed significantly. Henry I passed away and Stephen saw an opportunity to take power. You see, although once upon a time Henry I had a widely-recognized heir in his son William (the subject of his own past Footnoting
History episode), William had predeceased his father. William’s untimely death led to Henry’s only other living legitimate child, Matilda, becoming the new heir to the throne. The thing about Matilda, though, is that despite being a princess of England, most of her life was spent away from there. She’d been married off to the Holy Roman Emperor when she was a child,
and she would go by the title Empress Matilda whenever she could for the rest of her life. After her first husband passed away, she married again, this time to Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, Touraine, and Maine…also known as Geoffrey Plantagenet–yes, the starter of the famous Plantagenet line. At the time of Henry I’s death, Matilda was not in England, and that proved to be the perfect thing to allow Stephen to go to England first and claim that he should be the next king.
Despite Henry I’s wishes that Matilda follow in his footsteps, the barons of England had not been fully convinced that she should be allowed to reign in her own right. Stephen, the late king’s nephew, however, was well-liked, around way more than Matilda had ever been, and was, well, a man. It didn’t take long–and I mean that literally–for him to gain the backing
of the nobility and the Church. He was crowned king shortly before Christmas. Not long after that the leaders of Normandy–which, despite being in modern France, was often connected to the kings of England in this era–also accepted him as their lord. For Eustace, this meant that now instead of being prepared to just inherit Boulogne, he was suddenly the
most likely heir to the throne of England and control of Normandy. It was a fate he grew to view as an entitlement as he aged, and a cause he was devoted to seeing through to fruition. The issue, though, was that his father was a usurper. Despite the support Stephen had gained to become king, Matilda was still very much around and she was absolutely furious about Stephen’s
actions. With the support of her husband, Geoffrey, her illegitimate half-brother Robert, Earl of Gloucester, and her uncle David, the King of Scots, she rallied the troops and began to fight back to claim her rightful inheritance. Stephen and Matilda were going to fight for as long as necessary, not only to see who would hold the crown in the present, but for the future of their families…in Stephen’s case for Eustace and in Matilda’s case for her eldest son,
Henry. The chaos that ensued over the next nearly twenty years is often referred to as The Anarchy. Almost the entirety of Eustace’s life took place against the dominating backdrop of his father’s fight against Empress Matilda. Although Stephen’s reign initially did have support, the faction that backed Matilda grew and changed, especially when segments of the upper echelons of society became disenchanted with Stephen for choosing to listen to his friends over established
crown advisors. Still, even as Matilda never gave up, Stephen remained on the unstable throne. What all of this meant for Eustace was that as long as his father was king, he was going to be set up to succeed him one day. As such, Eustace began to appear in paperwork as the heir to Stephen’s crown and the wheels were put in motion to find him an heir-appropriate bride. Eustace’s father was acutely aware that it was a good idea to have positive ties with the nearby French king,
and so having his son marry a French princess was a pretty great goal. In the late 1130s, young Eustace was made to do homage to the French crown for the possession of Normandy. Doing homage basically means he went through a process that shows he recognized the French king was “allowing” (air quotes) him to hold Normandy. This diplomatic and performative act of respect helped strengthen ties between France and English-held Normandy, and good relations like that then allowed Eustace to
marry a French princess. In 1140, Eustace was betrothed and married to Constance, daughter of the late King Louis VI and sister of the current King Louis VII. He was roughly ten years old and she was several years his senior. But just because one prepares to be king doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, or at least not happen easily. In early 1141, Stephen’s forces clashed with those supporting Matilda at Lincoln and Stephen was taken captive. Matilda was poised to
take control, possibly forever. She quickly made it known that she intended to have a coronation, began planning it, and many accepted that she was officially becoming queen. Certainly this made Eustace’s future horribly uncertain. Henry of Winchester, a bishop and legate of the pope who also happened to be King Stephen’s brother, accepted Matilda as the new ruler but also stuck up for Eustace. He basically lobbied Matilda to get her to show Eustace some respect.
The way he saw it, with Stephen out of the picture–basically treated as a non-entity–and Matilda taking the crown of England, Eustace should at least be allowed to inherit his father’s other holdings, especially Boulogne. But Matilda wasn’t having any of it. She, likely rightly, believed that granting things to Eustace would make him a dangerous rallying point. She knew that she was the proper person to be ruler based on inheritance, but she also knew
that Stephen–and by extension, Eustace–were not without their supporters. She didn’t want to do anything to enable potential conflict when she was trying to restore the line of succession from her father to herself to her son, Henry. Luckily for Eustace, Empress Matilda may have initially been accepted as the new ruler, but she didn’t exactly win people over with her personality and diplomacy. She was viewed as cold and callous in her treatment of Stephen during his
captivity. Although I personally think she was a badass, she lacked people skills and generosity in this situation, causing her to alienate those she needed support from. Eustace’s mother, meanwhile, wasn’t sitting idle. Stephen’s queen used all of her power and resources to meet the Empress at London where she successfully ran her off. Soon after, King Stephen’s release was negotiated and he was back on the throne, restoring Eustace’s position…for the moment anyway.
He continued to grow up surrounded by warfare and the threat of his father being overthrown. Although his father remained on the throne, Matilda did not give up. However, by the late 1140s, she knew her time for becoming queen was gone. Her son and heir, Henry, was by now old enough to take up the fight and–hopefully–the crown. I know I called Matilda
a bit of a badass, but in my opinion, no one was more badass than her son, Henry. He used to style himself as Henry FitzEmpress, which meant Henry, son of the Empress, so that everyone knew exactly who he was. Anyway by the time Henry was taking over his mother’s cause Eustace was poised to enter his twenties and participate more actively in preserving his own future. Eustace’s reputation in this era, and in general, isn’t the best one. He was known to be a typical
lord, so a bit of a demanding jerk at times. But it wasn’t all bad. A contemporary commentary on Eustace said that he “showed himself extremely generous and courteous; everywhere he stretched forth a generous hand in cheerful liberality; as he had a great deal of his father’s disposition he could meet men on a footing of equality or superiority as occasion required; in one place he was entirely devoted to establishing pacts of peace, in another he confronted his enemies
sternly and invincibly.” The tail end of the 1140s saw Eustace trying to confront one specific enemy, Henry, sternly and invincibly but with little success. At one point Eustace was basically chasing a savvy Henry through Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, failing to catch him and growing increasingly enraged at the situation. He resorted to a not uncommon tactic of destruction,
burning down churches and houses, plundering, and generally causing horrible havoc. Again, it was not an uncommon thing to happen in a time of war, but in Eustace’s case, it was ineffective. Just like his father, he was never able to bring Henry down. Stephen and Eustace also failed in another way. With the conflict forever ongoing and no one looking like they were going to back down, Stephen was always trying to ensure the crown
passed to his son. He spent ages trying to make a move that was popular with the Capetian dynasty in France…have Eustace crowned king while he himself was still alive. This would be done so that people would see Eustace be anointed and get used to him being king while Stephen was still present, hopefully to ensure a peaceful transfer of power later. However, it needed to include the pope granting permission for the coronation to take place since a king had to be anointed by God.
Well…God apparently didn’t want to anoint Eustace because the pope refused to grant permission. This was a huge blow to Stephen, but likely an even more devastating blow to Eustace. Henry seemed to constantly evade defeat while Eustace’s future became increasingly uncertain. By 1153, two important things had happened that impacted Eustace. First, his mother had passed away, which meant that her lands passed to him, making him the newest
Count of Boulogne. That was a nice bump up in the world. Second, the tide of the conflict had turned irreparably against Stephen–and therefore Eustace’s–cause. Although Stephen and Eustace went up against Henry militarily several times, they never decisively won. The longer the Anarchy dragged on, the more needed a resolution became. People were tired. Truly. They were over it. Following a standoff at Wallingford, the push for peace basically became a
demand from the barons. As historian Catherine Hanley put it, “Wallingford…was not to be the scene of a climactic engagement: the magnates on both sides simply refused to fight.” Well then. Peace it had to be. While conversations about what a peace treaty could look like were attempted at various points from at least the early 1140s, it wasn’t until now that peace had to come to
fruition. A process began where Stephen and Henry’s camps had serious negotiations…and those negotiations made Eustace livid enough that the historical record asserts that he was “greatly vexed and angry because the war, in his opinion, had reached no proper conclusion.” He left the court and took out his feelings of frustration, rage, and betrayal on the lands of Bury St.
Edmunds, plundering them. When Eustace died, only a very short time later in mid-August, it was attributed to either the vengeance of the saint or a broken heart over the outcome of the conflict with Matilda and Henry. He was only in his early twenties, with no children to take up his cause. He was buried at Faversham Abbey, and his wife would go on to marry the Count of Toulouse. Looking at the terms of the peace, it’s understandable why they would be an epic
upset to Eustace. They were truly a blatant admission that Stephen’s reign was to be an anomaly and not the beginning of a long dynastic branch. The agreement said that because Stephen was an anointed king he should be allowed to remain king until his death, but when he died, the crown would not go to any of his children. It would, instead, go to Henry, making him King Henry II and restoring the line of succession that would have happened if Matilda had been allowed to rule
as her father originally intended. There were land rights provisions for Eustace, but with him dying, those went to Stephen’s other son, William. In his biography of King Stephen, historian Edmund King sums up the end of Eustace’s life succinctly as follows, “The peace had been made, and Eustace’s expectation to succeed his father as king formed no part of the terms on which that peace had been made. He had become one of yesterday’s men and was given the briefest of obituary notices.” Ouch.
Ultimately, though, King was right. Eustace’s death truly relegated him to the position of a footnote in history–thus making him a perfect topic for our podcast. If he had outlived his father and saw Henry II take the throne, I doubt he’d have taken that in stride and it’s possible England would have had another significant period of unrest…assuming there was anyone left in the
peace-starved realm to support him. However, without him around to possibly fight against Henry II’s ascension, Henry was able to take the throne following Stephen’s death in 1154 and begin trying to make right a country that had spent so many years subjected to fiery infighting and unstable rule. If there’s an afterlife and Eustace is there and able to hear this, he probably rolled his eyes at me just now, and I get it, his dreams were crushed…but at least we told his story.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Footnoting History. You can check out the entry for this episode on our website for links to past “Royal Son” episodes and we hope you’ll subscribe so that you can stay up to date with our latest releases. All of your follows, listens, shares, and likes help us know we should keep going, and we appreciate it to no end. But above all, always remember that the best stories are in the footnotes.