peace. The fields were untilled because no man could tell
who would reap the harvest. Thousands perished of starvation. If peace
there was to be, it could only come by Stephen's victory. It was now
known that Matilda was even less fit to govern than Stephen. Stephen
took one castle after another. In =1147= Earl Robert died, and in
=1148= Matilda gave up the struggle and left England.

[Illustration: Tower of Castor Church, Northamptonshire. Built about
1145. (The parapet and spire are later.)]

17. =Henry, Duke of the Normans. 1149.=--Whilst Matilda had been
losing England her husband had been conquering Normandy, and for a
little while it seemed possible that England and Normandy would be
separated; England remaining under Stephen and his heirs, and
Normandy united with Anjou under the Angevin Geoffrey and his
descendants. That the separation did not yet take place was partly
owing to the different character of the two heirs. Stephen's son,
Eustace, was rough and overbearing. Geoffrey's son, Henry, was shrewd
and prudent. Henry had already been in England when he was still quite
young, and had learnt something of English affairs from his uncle,
Robert of Gloucester. He returned to his father in =1147=, and in
=1149= Geoffrey gave up to him the duchy of Normandy. He was then sent
to try his fortune in England in his mother's stead, but he was only a
boy of sixteen, and too young to cope with Stephen. In =1150= he
abandoned the struggle for a time. In his absence Stephen had still
rebels to put down and castles to besiege, but he had the greater part
of the kingdom at his back, and if Henry had continued to leave him
alone he would probably have reduced all his enemies to submission.

18. =The Last Days of Stephen. 1153--1154.=--In =1150= Geoffrey died,
and Henry became Count of Anjou as well as Duke of Normandy. Before
long he acquired a much wider territory than either Anjou or Normandy.
Louis VII. of France had to wife Eleanor, the Duchess of Aquitaine,
and through her had added to his own scanty dominions the whole of the
lands between the Loire and the Pyrenees. Louis, believing that she
was unfaithful to him, had divorced her on the pretext that she was
too near of kin. Henry was not squeamish about the character of so
great an heiress, and in =1152= married the Duchess of Aquitaine for
the sake of her lands. Thus strengthened, he again returned to
England. He was now a young man of nineteen; his vigour was as gr