ighly dangerous to contend with two such
enemies at once; and he was much more ready to yield to Henry, who had
no reciprocal demands on him, than to the Emperor, who had many and just
ones, and to whom he could not yield any one point without giving up an
infinite number of others very material and interesting.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1120.]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1127.]

As the king extricated himself happily from so great an affair, so all
the other difficulties of his reign only exercised, without endangering
him. The efforts of France in favor of the son of Robert were late,
desultory, and therefore unsuccessful. That youth, endued with equal
virtue and more prudence than his father, after exerting many useless
acts of unfortunate bravery, fell in battle, and freed Henry from all
disturbance on the side of France. The incursions of the Welsh in this
reign only gave him an opportunity of confining that people within
narrower bounds. At home he was well obeyed by his subjects; abroad he
dignified his family by splendid alliances. His daughter Matilda he
married to the Emperor. But his private fortunes did not flow with so
even a course as his public affairs. His only son, William, with a
natural daughter, and many of the flower of the young nobility, perished
at sea between Normandy and England. From that fatal accident the king
was never seen to smile. He sought in vain from a second marriage to
provide a male successor; but when he saw all prospect of this at an
end, he called a great council of his barons and prelates. His daughter
Matilda, after the decease of the Emperor, he had given in marriage to
Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou. As she was his only remaining
issue, he caused her to be acknowledged as his successor by the great
council; he enforced this acknowledgment by solemn oaths of fealty,--a
sanction which he weakened rather than confirmed by frequent repetition:
vainly imagining that on his death any ties would bind to the respect of
a succession so little respected by himself, and by the violation of
which he had procured his crown. Having taken these measures in favor of
his daughter, he died in Normandy, but in a good old age, and in the
thirty-sixth year of a prosperous reign.

CHAPTER V.

REIGN OF STEPHEN.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1135.]

Although the authority of the crown had been exercised with very little
restraint during the three preceding reigns, the succession to it, or
even the principles