If the average person knows anything about Empress Matilda it is likely to be the romantic story of her escape from Oxford in the winter of 1142. She had been besieged for weeks at Oxford Castle by Stephen of Blois, her cousin and rival for the throne of England. Castle supplies were running low and the situation was desperate.
Emperor Henry V and Matilda of England from an 1114 tapestry
One December night, during a heavy snowfall, Matilda and three loyal knights lowered a rope from a window in St George’s Tower and silently climbed down. Donning white cloaks as camouflage, they stole across the frozen river and through the ranks of Stephen’s men, eventually making it to Wallingford Castle, the stronghold of one of Matilda’s supporters.
However, according to this new biography of the woman who would have been England’s first queen, chroniclers almost certainly embellished the tale. Matilda probably left the castle by a little-used gate at a time when the watch was lax. Professor Elisabeth van Houts of the University of Cambridge does her best to strip away the exaggerations and distortions of previous writers to provide as full, and as sober, an account of Matilda’s life as we are likely to get.
