All his efforts and all his precautions, however, had not enabled him to secure the succession to his daughter. Scarcely had he breathed his last when his nephew Stephen, son of the Count of Blois and of Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, set sail immediately for England. The king had always treated his nephew with particular favor; he had given him vast fiefs in England. The Count Stephen was very popular among the Normans and the Saxons. His wife, Maud, niece of Matilda, first wife of Henry I., even belonged to the royal Saxon family. Stephen boldly laid claim to the throne, which could not, he said, belong to a woman. {136} He was descended like her from William the Conqueror, and in the same degree. England was not a property which could be bequeathed at pleasure and without respect for the wishes of the people. Many barons were of Stephen's opinion, and the treasure of King Henry, which his brother the Bishop of Winchester yielded up to him, secured to him other adherents. The chief minister of the deceased king, Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, whom Henry had originally remarked and attached to his person as "the readiest priest at saying a mass whom he had ever met with," allowed himself to be won by money. William Corbois, Archbishop of Canterbury, was more scrupulous, but was persuaded that the king, irritated by the conduct of his daughter, had adopted his nephew on his death-bed. Stephen was elected by the barons and prelates, who considered themselves absolved from their oath towards the empress because she had married without their consent; and the coronation took place at Westminster, on the 26th of December, St. Stephen's Day. The pope confirmed the election with the more readiness because Stephen had accepted the oath of the clergy, under the condition imposed by the bishops, of respect for the liberties and discipline of the Church. The barons had obtained new fiefs, with permission to fortify their castles and to construct new ones. Those who were greedy for gain received money, and King Stephen was in such high favor on both sides of the sea that when Geoffrey Plantagenet entered Normandy to claim the rights of his wife, the natural animosity of the Normans against the Angevins broke forth with violence. The count was compelled to retire, and to conclude with Stephen a truce for two years, in consideration of a pension of 3000 marks of silver. The king crossed over into Normandy, and received there the homage of the barons; and Louis VII., surnamed the Young, then king of France, betrothed his young sister, Constance, to the little Eustace, son of Stephen, granting to the child the investiture of Normandy. {137}