French king's sister Constance, whom she brought back with her to England. In 1141, when Stephen had been made prisoner at the battle of Lincoln, and a council met at Winchester (7 April) under his brother, bishop Henry [see Henry of Blois], to acknowledge the empress as lady of England, the queen sent a clerk of her household with a letter to the assembly, entreating for her husband's restoration. This appeal having failed, she endeavoured to negotiate with the empress for his release, but in vain. Meanwhile, however, she was busy, in concert with Stephen's favourite captain, William of Ypres, rallying the king's scattered partisans, and gathering a host, which now advanced wasting, plundering, slaughtering all before it, almost to the gates of London, where the empress had set up her court and was making herself so unpopular that the citizens drove her out at the queen's approach. Matilda of Boulogne established her headquarters in London, obtained an interview with bishop Henry at Guildford, and persuaded him to return to his natural allegiance. When the empress besieged him at Winchester, she was speedily besieged in her turn by ‘the king's queen with all her strength’ (Engl. Chron. a. 1140) so effectually that she was driven to withdraw. Her half-brother, Robert, earl of Gloucester [q. v.], was captured in the retreat, and the next six months were spent in negotiations between his wife and the queen for his release in exchange for Stephen. Matilda herself took charge of the captive earl, putting him under no physical restraint, but merely leading him about in her train, till the exchange was effected, November 1141. Stephen and Matilda re-entered London together, and on Christmas-day they both ‘wore their crowns’ in Canterbury Cathedral. In 1147 Matilda shared with William of Ypres the task of mediation between Stephen and Archbishop Theobald, whose appointment to Canterbury ten years before had been partly owed to her influence. In 1148–9 she resided chiefly at Canterbury, to superintend the building of Faversham Abbey, which she and Stephen had founded on land obtained from William of Ypres in exchange for her manor of Lillechurch, Kent. At the end of April 1152 she fell sick at Hedingham Castle, Essex; she sent for her confessor, Ralph, prior of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, and died three days later, 3 May. She was buried in Faversham Abbey. In 1136 or 1137 Matilda and her husband had founded, for the souls of her father ‘and of our children,’ a preceptory of Knights Templars at Cowley in Oxfordshire. In 1142 she founded a Cistercian abbey on her lands at Coggeshall in Essex. The Hospital of St. Katharine by the Tower of London was established by her in 1148, on land acquired by exchange with the canons of Trinity, Aldgate, for the souls of two of her children, Baldwin and Matilda, who were buried in Trinity Church. This younger Matilda was born in 1134, and betrothed in 1136 to Count Waleran of Meulan. Three children survived: Eustace, who died in August 1153; William, who became by marriage Earl of Warenne, but died childless in 1160; and Mary, who was devoted as an infant to the religious life, and was brought up first in the nunnery of Stratford, then in a cell founded for her by her mother, at Lillechurch, and afterwards (probably on the transfer of Lillechurch to William of Ypres in 1148) removed to Romsey, where she became abbess. On her brother William's death Henry II recognised her as heiress of Boulogne, and obtained a papal dispensation for her marriage with Matthew, son of the Count of Flanders. She died in 1182, leaving two daughters, through the younger of whom, Matilda, the county of Boulogne ultimately passed to the house of Brabant.
[William of Malmesbury, vol. ii.; Gervase of Canterbury, vol. i., ed. Stubbs; Henry of Huntingdon, ed. Arnold; Chronicles of Stephen, &c., vols. i. iii. iv., ed. Howlett (all in Rolls Series); Continuation of Florence of Worcester, ed. Thorpe (Engl. Hist. Soc.); Hist. of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, in App. to William of Newburgh, ed. Hearne, vol. iii.; Vita Theobaldi & Chronicon Beccense, in Lanfranc's Works, ed. Giles, vol. i.; Ordericus Vitalis, in Duchesne, Historiæ Normannorum Scriptores; Monasticon Anglicanum, vols. iv. v. vi.; Strickland's Queens of England, vol. i.; Everett Green's Princesses of England, vol. i.]
MATILDA, MAUD, MOLD, ÆTHELIC, AALIZ (1102–1167), empress, daughter of Henry I, king of England, and his first wife, Matilda (1080–1118) [q. v.], was born in London (Will. FitzStephen, in Mater. for Hist. of Becket, iii. 13) in 1102 (Gerv. Cant. i. 91–2). The ‘English Chronicle’ (a. 1127) calls her ‘Æthelic,’ and John of Hexham calls her ‘Aaliz’ and ‘Adela’ (Twysden, cols. 266, 269). Gervase, however, says that she was named Matilda after her mother; and by that name, in its various forms, she is known. At Whitsuntide 1109 her father accepted a proposal for her marriage with the German king, Henry V. Early next spring she was sent into Germany, under the care of Bishop Burchard of Cambrai and Roger FitzRichard, and with a dowry of ten thousand marks. At Easter, 10 April, she was betrothed at Utrecht to Henry V in
