Stephen III

When Julian II died in 4441, Stephen III was crowned at Westminster by the party of the river and the ports, while his rival was crowned at Oxford Gate. Both were anointed, both held real obedience, and the king-lists keep them both.

Stephen III was the river's king. The creditors of the Pool, the dock companies and the convoy houses had the money and the ships, and when Julian II died they had a candidate crowned at Westminster before the inland houses could gather. Robert II was crowned at Oxford Gate within the season, and the realm had two anointed kings and a war of sieges and burned bridges that split the south's musters for eleven years.

His war was a war of wharves and convoys. The southern ports held for him; customs severity, cargo rules and bonded suspicion all hardened in the ports where loyalty had to be read from a manifest. London learned under him what it costs when two crowns each claim the wharves, the levies and the bridges, and it has not forgotten.

The war ended in 4452 with neither king, and the realm settled under Maud. How Stephen died is told three ways, and the king-lists choose none of them. He is not hated in London, which remembers that he paid his debts, and he is not honoured anywhere, which is the usual fate of a king who was only half a king.

In person

About thirty-six at his coronation, slight and sharp-featured, clean-shaven, with dark, quick eyes under a full-bottomed powdered periwig. He wears a coronation coat of crimson velvet with deep gold-laced cuffs, a long gold-embroidered waistcoat, a lace cravat, white silk stockings and an ermine-lined mantle, the Westminster crown on his head; he sits upright on the coronation chair holding the sceptre.