The Anarchy

England had a lawful heir. A rival reached the crown first.

When Henry I's only legitimate son drowned in the White Ship disaster of 1120, the future of the Anglo-Norman kingdom was thrown into uncertainty.

Henry compelled his barons to recognise his daughter Matilda as his successor. She was the widow of an emperor, the granddaughter of William the Conqueror and the mother of a new dynasty. Yet when Henry died in 1135, his nephew Stephen crossed the Channel, secured the royal treasury and was crowned before Matilda could act.

The result was a civil war that lasted almost twenty years.

The Anarchy follows the struggle from the sinking of the White Ship through Stephen's seizure of the throne, Scottish invasion, Matilda's arrival in England, the capture of the king at Lincoln and the violent confrontations at London, Winchester and Oxford.

It examines the castles, sieges, mercenaries and shifting alliances that divided England, while also exploring what the conflict meant for towns, monasteries, tenants, merchants and families caught between competing rulers.

Stephen was courageous, generous and personally popular, but he struggled to convert possession of the crown into lasting control. Matilda possessed inheritance, designation and sworn recognition, but could not secure coronation or universal acceptance. Neither could destroy the other's claim.

Drawing on medieval chronicles, charters, financial records, archaeology and modern historical scholarship, Gordon J. MacKenzie separates contemporary evidence from later legend and challenges the idea that England simply collapsed into complete lawlessness.

The Anarchy is the story of a kingdom divided between two lawful claims, and of the compromise that eventually placed Henry II on the throne.