The strife died out, in fact, through sheer exhaustion, for years of anarchy and war had broken the strength of both sides; and at last “that happened which would least be believed, that the division of the kingdom was not settled by the sword.”  The only body of men who still possessed any public feeling, any political sagacity, or unity of purpose, found its opportunity in the general confusion.  The English Church, “to whose right it principally belongs to elect the king,” as Theobald had once said in words which Gregory VII. would have approved, beat down all opposition of the angry nobles; and in November 1153 Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester and brother of Stephen, brought about a final compromise.  The treaty which had been drawn up at Wallingford was confirmed at Westminster.  Henry was made the adopted son of Stephen, a sharer of his kingdom while he lived, its heir when he should die.  “In the business of the kingdom,” the king promised, “I will work by the counsel of the duke; but in the whole realm of England, as well in the duke’s part as my own, I will exercise royal justice.”  Henry did homage and swore fealty to Stephen, while, as they embraced, “the bystanders burst into tears of joy,” and the nobles, who had stood sullenly aloof from counsel and consent, took oaths of allegiance to both princes.  For a few months Henry remained in England, months marked by suspicions and treacheries on all sides.  Stephen was helpless, the nobles defiant, their strongholds were untouched, and the treaty remained practically a dead letter.  After the discovery of a conspiracy against his life supported by Stephen’s second son and the Flemish troops, Henry gave up for the moment the hopeless task, and left England.  But before long Stephen’s death gave the full lordship into his hands.  On the 19th of December 1154 he was crowned at Winchester King of England, amid the acclamations of crowds who had already learned “to bear him great love and fear.”

King of England, Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine, Count of Poitou, Duke of Aquitaine, suzerain lord of Britanny, Henry found himself at twenty-one ruler of dominions such as no king before him had ever dreamed of uniting.  He was master of both sides of the English Channel, and by his alliance with his uncle, the Count of Flanders, he had command of the French coast from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees, while his claims on Toulouse would carry him to the shores of the Mediterranean.  His subjects told with pride how “his empire reached from the Arctic Ocean to the Pyrenees;” there was no monarch save the Emperor himself who ruled over such vast domains.  But even the Emperor did not gather under his sway a grouping of peoples so strangely divided in race, in tongue, in aims, in history.  No common tie of custom or of sympathy united the unwieldy bundle of states bound together in a common subjection; the men of Aquitaine hated Anjou with as intense a bitterness