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winter, and this was no exception. The banks of the river were heaped high with snow, and there was ice on the surface of the water. A fierce wind tossed and tore Stephen’s banner, with its leopards, and did the same for the Angevin banners on the other shore.
    And then, as the knights tested the edges of their swords and the squires greased harness with avid fingers, a gleam of great good sense came to one of the combatants. This was William d’Aubigny, a widower two years and still disconsolate over the loss of his fair Adelicia. He seems to have been on the King’s side of the river. At any rate, he went to Stephen and protested that the peace of the country should not be disturbed further when an amicable arrangement should be possible to arrive at. Some historians credit Archbishop Theobald with being the agent of peace, but it is not important who was responsible for the urgent suggestion that the stage of the olive branch had arrived. The important thing is that Stephen rode down to the river on his side and young Henry Fitz-Empress came up on the south and a conference was held from bank to bank. The result was peace at last, a solution of the differences which had reduced England to such desolation.
    Stephen was to be King for the balance of his life and Henry was to succeed him. The Treaty of Wallingford, as it was called, provided, moreover, that Stephen was to disband his mercenaries and send them out of the country, the new castles were to be razed, and new sheriffs were to be appointed to proceed with the restoration of law and order.
    At this point Matthew Paris peers once more around the backdrop of history and prompts the chief actors with words of his own. The Empress, he declares, was at Wallingford and the settlement was due to her efforts. “The Empress,” he writes, “who would rather have been Stephen’s paramour than his foe, they say, caused King Stephen to be called aside, and coming boldly up to him, said, ‘What mischievous and unnaturalthing go ye about to do? Is it meet the father should destroy the son, or the son kill the sire? etc., etc.’ ”
    This, of course, has no roots in truth. The Empress was not in England when these events occurred, and had she been there, her last thought would have been to counsel peace. Not that resolute lady whose whole life had been dedicated to the winning of the crown! There are certain pieces of evidence on this point, however, which make the possibility of Henry being the son of Stephen a little more than mere surmise. The Empress was in England the year before the birth of the prince and swore at first furiously and definitely that she would not go back to Geoffrey, then changed her mind hurriedly. In some sources it is said that Henry called Stephen his father during the cross-water negotiations, a statement which seems to carry the hallmark of invention on the face of it.
    There is still, however, another bit of evidence, and this time it is both more important and credible, being based at least on fact. When Geoffrey of Anjou died, he left instructions that he was not to be buried until his son Henry had agreed to accept the terms of his will. Now the will had not been opened and could not be immediately, and Henry found himself in a most uncomfortable dilemma. What unacceptable terms might the will contain? What sacrifices might it demand of him? Henry was not the kind of man to enter into blind compacts. And yet there was the body of his father awaiting burial and, it may be assumed, losing something in preservation with each hour. Finally, and most ungraciously, Henry gave in. He would accept the conditions. Without a doubt the body of the dead earl was then lowered at once into the grave.
    When the will was read, it was found that the earldoms of Anjou, Touraine, and Maine, which Geoffrey had held in his own right, were left as a matter of course to the eldest son. Geoffrey, the second son, received three castles, Mirabeau, Chinon, and