Nigel (Bishop of Ely) - Stephen's Early Reign

Stephen's Early Reign

Following King Henry's death in 1135, the succession was disputed between the king's nephews—Stephen and his elder brother, Theobald II, Count of Champagne—and Henry's surviving legitimate child Matilda, usually known as the Empress Matilda because of her first marriage to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry V. King Henry's only legitimate son, William, had died in 1120. After Matilda was widowed in 1125, she returned to her father, who married her to Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. All the magnates of England and Normandy were required to declare fealty to Matilda as Henry's heir, but when Henry I died in 1135, Stephen rushed to England and had himself crowned before either Theobald or Matilda could react. The Norman barons accepted Stephen as Duke of Normandy, and Theobald contented himself with his possessions in France. Matilda, though, was less sanguine, and secured the support of the Scottish king, David, who was her maternal uncle, and in 1138 also the support of her half-brother, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, an illegitimate son of Henry I.

After Stephen's accession, Nigel was at first retained as treasurer, but the king came to suspect him and his family of secretly supporting the Empress Matilda. The prime movers behind Stephen's suspicions against the bishops were the Beaumont family, headed by the twin brothers Robert, Earl of Leicester, and Waleran, Count of Meulan, who wished to be the main advisors of the king. Roger, Alexander, and Nigel together held key castles, including Salisbury, Devizes, Sherborne, Malmesbury, Sleaford, and Newark. The Beaumonts alleged that Roger and his family were fortifying the castles they held in preparation for turning them over to Matilda. They urged the king to confiscate the castles before they were lost. Although the Gesta Stephani, or Deeds of King Stephen, a medieval chronicle of the events of Stephen's reign, alleges that Roger was disloyal to Stephen, the evidence is against such action by Roger, as he had been an opponent of Matilda since 1126, when she was first put forward as her father's heir. Roger and his family also had been early supporters of Stephen's seizure of the crown after Henry I's death. The contemporary chronicler Orderic Vitalis felt that Roger's family were going to betray the king, but William of Malmesbury believed that the allegations were based on envy from "powerful laymen". Whatever Roger's position, Nigel's own position on Matilda is less clear, and it is possible that he was never as opposed to her as his uncle. No evidence survives that he was estranged from Stephen, however, as Nigel continued to witness charters throughout the first four years of Stephen's reign. According to the historian Marjorie Chibnall, Nigel's family may have been caught up in a dispute between Henry of Blois and the Beaumonts.