William had three surviving sons, and by the rules of tenure his entire estate should have gone to his eldest son, Robert. William, however, had left to Robert only the Duchy of Normandy, while the English Crown went on to his second son, William Rufus. Henry, the youngest, for the time being was satisfied with £ 5,000 of silver. Had the terms of this will been maintained, Normandy and England would have gone their separate ways, and the Norman conquest might have been no more than a transient episode in the history of England. As it was, however, this division of the Norman kingdom began years of turmoil among the Conqueror’s descendants as well as among the Norman barons, most of whom would have preferred Robert as the sole ruler.
As it turned out, William II proved to be an extremely violent ruler, a coarse and sinister man, given, it was said, to unnatural vices, and ruled by an insatiable greed. He appears to have exploited everyone and everything around him. His demands on his feudal lords and tenants bordered on extortion; governmental income was diverted to his private coffers, and he even went so far as to leave high Church offices – including that of the Archbishop of Canterbury – unfilled for years at a time in order to keep the profits for himself. It was later said of William II that he had “made hell fouler by his coming.” It probably was only justice then, when in August 1100, while hunting in a forest, William II was killed by an arrow, an incident only thinly disguised as an accident.
William’s brother Robert, Duke of Normandy, the immediate heir to the English throne, had proven not much more efficient in his domain. He had already lost Maine to Anjou, and after years of battling with his brothers, had pledged all of Normandy to William for 10,000 marks in order to join the First Crusade to the Holy Land. With William dead and Robert removed from immediate contact, the youngest brother, Henry, quickly seized his opportunity and had himself elected King of England as the only remaining heir to William the Conqueror. Crowned Henry I, the new king was shrewd enough to realize that his claim was doubtful at best, especially once his older brother should reappear. In order to win popular support, Henry acted quickly: he recalled several of the Churchmen who had been exiled by his brother, including the Archbishop of Canterbury; he married the daughter of a descendant of the Anglo-Saxon kings; and at the time of coronation he issued a charter in which he vaguely promised to redress all the grievances held against William II. Still, Henry was a Norman lord, and it is doubtful that he ever had any real intentions of enforcing the provisions of this charter; but a century later this same document became the basis for Magna Carta, the greatest of all royal charters issued in medieval times.
Henry had wisely acted with speed, for only a few months later Robert returned from the Holy Land and immediately claimed his birthright to the English throne. There followed five years of fighting, of negotiations and of scheming, until Henry finally settled the entire issue by crossing the Channel, invading Normandy, capturing and imprisoning his brother at Cardiff Castle, where Robert stayed a prisoner for 28 years until his death in 1134. Henry survived him barely a year, and with his death began new battles over the succession.

Henry’s only surviving heir turned out to be a daughter named Matilda. No woman had ever ruled England, and the tough Norman barons were not about to allow such heresy now. Despite the fact that they had sworn allegiance to the arrogant Matilda while her father was still alive, the barons now elected Stephen of Blois, Henry’s nephew, and a popular grandson of William the Conqueror. But Matilda proved even tougher than expected; a Norman heiress, the widow of Emperor Henry V. of Germany, now married to Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou, she refused to concede anything. Using all her considerable resources, Matilda embarked on nearly two decades of intermittent civil war, briefly capturing Stephen and even the throne of England. But she was soon driven from London again and Stephen resumed his reign.
King Stephen, however, proved himself to be just one more of a long line of weak and indecisive rulers. Never able to dominate or even control the Norman barons, he desperately tried to buy their allegiance, but succeeded only in making them still more rebellious. Soon the Crown had lost much of the authority built up during the Conqueror’s days, and once again the barons began fighting with each other, pillaging the lands of their neighbors and building defensive castles in open defiance of royal orders. And all through this mounting anarchy, the supporters of Matilda again and again pressed for her rights. By 1153, Stephen’s only son had died, and the king, broken in spirit and tired of fighting, finally agreed to a compromise: Stephen was to reign unopposed for the rest of his life; thereafter, Matilda’s son, Henry of Anjou, was to be recognized as the legitimate ruler. Mercifully, Stephen expired only a year later, leaving behind him a kingdom in shambles. It was fortunate for England that Henry of Anjou, Henry II of England, turned out to be one of the greatest monarchs of the Middle Ages.