The position of Duke Robert's son was apparently more hopeful now that he was the only lineal male heir to the throne. King Henry was not, however, the less earnest in his endeavours to transmit all his dignities to his own children. Thus reads the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," for 1127:-- "This year at Christmas, King Henry held his court at Windsor, and David, King of Scotland, was there, and all the headmen of England, both clergy and laity. And the King caused the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and all the thanes who were present, to swear to place England and Normandy, after his death, in the hands of his daughter the princess, who had been the wife of the Emperor of Saxony. And then he sent her to Normandy, accompanied by her brother Robert, Earl of Gloucester, and by Brian, the son of the Earl Alan Fergan; and he caused her to be wedded to the son of the Earl of Anjou, named Geoffrey Martel." In the following year the brief, but brilliant, career of Prince William came to an end. After a most honourable campaign, whilst "he was besieging Eu against King Henry, and expected on the morrow to receive its surrender, for the enemy was almost worn-out, the young man died of a slight wound in the hand, leaving behind him an endless name." Robert of Normandy fulfilled the number of his days in the year 1134. No doubt the statement of Matthew Paris was quite correct:-- "When the King heard of his death, he did not grieve much, but commanded the body to be reverently interred in the conventual church of Gloucester." King Henry had reigned many years, and committed many crimes to secure his crown, but, such is the irony of fate, he was not permitted to enjoy his triumph long, for, on the 1st of December, he died through over-indulgence in supping on lampreys, and, to use the expressive ambiguity of Carlyle, "went to his own place, wherever that might be." Prominent among the nobles of England was Stephen, Count of Blois, the son of the Conqueror's daughter Adela, and the first peer of the realm--a position which he put to the proof when the oath of allegiance was taken to the ex-Empress Matilda, Robert, Duke of Gloucester, having vainly claimed precedence, although he could only claim as the natural son of the King. Stephen was a brave, generous, and popular noble, and both the peers and commons of England would have preferred his rule to that of the King's daughter; when, therefore, he made claim to the throne no opposition was raised.