A Week in Politics: Oxford, late July 1141

A WEEK CAN BE a long time in politics. We owe the observation to Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1964 to 1970 and again from 1974 to 1976. His predecessor, Harold Macmillan, asked about the main difficulties that he faced in office, is reported to have responded very simply, ‘events, dear boy, events’. A political historian, writing of Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, when these men were in power, can hope to provide a detailed analysis which takes proper account of these maxims. There is every need for a similar political history of the reign of King Stephen. Yet the difficulties in writing one would appear to be insuperable. We do not lack for stirring ‘events’. It is the ‘weeks’ that are the problem. The documents which should provide the spine for any political analysis, the royal charters, are not dated as a matter of routine. We look enviously at the contemporary charters of the kings of France, the counts of Flanders, and the popes in Rome. With their acta there may be scope for scholarly discussion of such matters as regnal years but there is a real security in these texts nonetheless. In England, on the other hand, we cannot say with complete confidence where the king of England was on any specific day at any time between 7 June 1143 and 12 May 1146, a period of three years.