Baron William de Clayton

https://erenow.net/common/thegreatturningpointsofbritishhistorymich...

1141 Stephen and Matilda fight a civil war Edmund King

There had been three rulers of England in the year 1066, first Edward the Confessor, then Harold Godwineson and then William the Conqueror. So there would be in 1141 also, first Stephen, then Matilda and then Stephen (again). That Stephen would regain power was a result that no one would have expected after the battle that was fought at Lincoln on Candlemas Day, 2 February 1141.

On that day, outside the city walls, the Anglo-Norman lords, monitored by their kings, were a dynamic force. By 1135, they controlled most of the southern half of Wales... The Scottish kings adapted to the same pattern, building castles and boroughs at centres such as Roxburgh, Berwick, Perth and Edinburgh, and Norman families such as the Bruces and Stewarts accepted their lordship.

The battle [was] fought at Lincoln on 2 February 1141. ...Outside the city walls, two substantial armies confronted each other. On the one side were King Stephen ...with his earls - many created recently as a reward for loyalty - along with the baronage of northern England and troops from Flanders... Opposing him, in the name of the Empress Matilda ...were her half-brother, Robert, earl of Gloucester, Ranulf, earl of Chester - whose ambition to control Lincoln had precipitated the battle - other magnates and ‘a dreadful and unendurable mass of Welshmen’. It was a serious matter to fight an anointed king, and Stephen’s side at first thought their opponents would engage in jousting and then retire; they were wrong.

King Stephen was very quickly abandoned by his ‘false and factious earls’. He himself fought bravely, allegedly wielding a two-sided axe to good effect. But he was eventually captured.

https://books.google.com/books?id=fcaWDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA266&lpg=PA266&d...

The Anglo Saxon Chronicle, translated and edited by Michael Swanton, p. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, New York, New York. 1998

"[1140] And after that there grew a very great war between the king [Steven] and Ranulf Earl of Chester; not because he did not give him all that he could ask him, as he did all others, but always the more he gave them, the worse they were to him. The earl held Lincoln against the king, and deprived him of all that he ought to have. And the king went there and besieged him and his brother William of Roumare in the Castle; and the earl stole out and traveled for Robert Earl of Gloucester, and brought him there with a great army [1141] and on Candlemass Day they fought hard against their lord... and put him in prison and in fetters there. Then the whole of England was more disturbed than it ever was before, and every evil was in the land." p. 266