Oath for Empress Matilda

January 1, 1126

Henry I compelled his English barons to swear they would accept his daughter Matilda as queen, the first time such an oath had been demanded for a woman in England. Many swore with fingers crossed. When Henry died the magnates promptly chose her cousin Stephen instead. The broken oaths would haunt the kingdom for nearly two decades, producing the civil war chroniclers remembered as the years when Christ and his saints slept.