If all efforts made to defeat Henry’s succession failed, the succession of his daughter Matilda was disputed triumphantly. Stephen, taking advantage of his cousin’s absence and of her personal unpopularity, made a rapid descent on England with the spasmodic energy which characterized him, and successfully snatched the Crown. Trained in English ways on English soil, he was quickly on the spot and very popular. These features in his favour, however, did not render his position entirely secure as against the daughter and heiress of so strong a King as Henry I., to whom, indeed, Stephen himself, with all the magnates of England, had already thrice sworn allegiance. He was only one of two competitors for the Crown, with chances nearly equal. From the moment of the old King’s death, “the Norman barons treated the succession as an open question.” In these words of Bishop Stubbs,[171] Mr. J. H. Round finds[172] the keynote of the reign. Stephen was never secure on his throne, and had to make indiscriminate promises first to obtain, and afterwards to retain, his position. He was thus prepared to bid much higher for support than Henry had felt compelled to do. Adherents had to be gained painfully, one by one, by the grant of special favours to every individual whose support was worth the buying. ----- Footnote 171: Stubbs, _Const. Hist._, I. 345. Footnote 172: Round, _Geoffrey de Mandeville_, p. 1. ----- Bargains were struck with the Londoners, with Stephen’s brother Henry of Blois (Bishop of Winchester), with the Keepers of the King’s Treasure, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and with the Justiciar (Bishop Roger of Salisbury). The support of the two last mentioned carried with it the support of the Church and of the administrative staff of the late king, but was only gained by wide concessions. Thus Stephen, like William of Orange, five centuries later, agreed to become “king upon conditions.” A Charter of Liberties and a solemn oath securing "the liberty of the Church"—a vague phrase, it is true, but none the less dangerous on that account—together formed the price of Stephen’s consecration; and this price was not perhaps too high when we remember that "election was a matter of opinion, coronation a matter of fact"—a solemn sacrament that could hardly be undone.[173] ----- Footnote 173: Round, _Geoffrey de Mandeville_, p. 6. Mr. Round, _ibid._, p. 438, explains that the reason of the omission from this earlier charter of Stephen (unlike the more lengthy and important one which followed four months later) of all mention of the Church was that Stephen, at the time of granting, supplemented it by the verbal promise recorded by William of Malmesbury, _de libertate reddenda ecclesiae et conservanda_. -----