It seems strange that the oldest Charters of the express Creation of the title of Comes (Count or Earl) are those of Queen Maud, who first created the Earldom of Essex and the Earldom of Hereford. To Aubrey de Vere also she granted the Earldom of Cambridge, or another title if he preferred it, and he chose the Earldom of Oxford. A struggle like the Wars of the Roses was closed by the death of Stephen and the peaceable succession of Matilda’s son, Henry II. Another lady of the family was supplanted by the proverbially “cruel uncle.” King John in 1202 made prisoners of his nephew, Arthur, Duke of Brittany, and the Princess Eleanor, his sister, called “The Beauty of Brittany.” Arthur is supposed to have been murdered by his uncle, and Eleanor was confined for forty years in Bristol Castle. A true daughter of Constance, she is said to have possessed a high and invincible spirit, and to have constantly insisted on her right to the throne, which was probably the reason that she spent her life in captivity. (_See_ the close Rolls of the Tower of London, and the Introduction xxxv.) But the second real crisis was that which closed the Wars of the Roses. Another Stephen appeared in Henry VII., who, fortunately for the people, simplified matters by marrying Elizabeth of York, the rightful heir. Jealous in the extreme of his wife’s prerogative, he used his high hand as the conqueror of Richard and the Kingdom, delayed her coronation as long as he dared, ignored her in his councils, and magnified his relation as husband, to the extinction of her glory as Queen.