1154.

Stephen lived not above a year to share the happiness of this peace with his people, in which time he made a progress through most parts of the kingdom, where he gained universal love and veneration, by a most affable and courteous behaviour to all men.  A few months after his return he went to Dover, to have an interview with the Earl of Flanders;[43] where, after a short sickness, he died of the iliac passion, together with his old distemper the hemorrhoids, upon the twenty-fifth day of October, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the nineteenth of his reign.

[Footnote 43:  The Earl of Flanders was a potent sovereign on the continent, and had landed at Dover, in order to meet and confer with the King. [D.S.]]

He was a prince of wonderful endowments, both in body and mind:  in his person tall and graceful, of great strength as well as vigour:  he had a large portion of most virtues that can be useful in a King towards the happiness of his subjects or himself; courtesy and valour, liberality and clemency, in an eminent degree; especially the last, which he carried to an extreme, though very pardonable, yet hardly consisting with prudence, or his own safety.  If we except his usurpation of the crown, he must be allowed a prince of great justice, which most writers affirm to have been always unblemished, except in that single instance:  for, as to his treatment of the bishops and the Earl of Chester, it seems very excusable by the necessity of the time; and it was the general opinion, if he had not used that proceeding with the latter, it would have cost him his crown.  Perhaps his injustice to the Empress might likewise admit a little extenuation.  Four kings successively had sat on the throne without any regard to lineal descent; a period beyond the memory of most men then alive; whereby the people had lost much of that devotion they were used to bear towards an established succession:  besides, the government of a woman was then a thing unknown, and for that reason disliked by all who professed to hate innovations.

But the wisdom of this prince was by no means equal to the rest of his virtues.  He came to the crown upon as fair a title as his predecessor, being elected by the general consent of the nobles, through the credit of his brother, and his own personal merit.  He had no disturbance for some time, which he might easily have employed in settling the kingdom, and acquiring the love of his people.  He had treasure enough to raise and pay armies, without burthening the subject.  His competitor was a woman, whose sex was the least of her infirmities, and with whom he had already compounded for his quiet by a considerable pension:  yet with all these advantages he seldom was master of above half the kingdom at once, and that by the force of perpetual struggling, and with frequent danger of losing the whole.  The principal difficulties he had to encounter, appear to have been manifest consequences