[247] _Gesta_, 79. In the word "inthronizandam," I contend, is to be found the confirmation of my theory, based on comparison and induction, of an intended coronation at Westminster. So far as I know, attention has never been drawn to it before.
CHAPTER IV. THE FIRST CHARTER OF THE EMPRESS.
Though the election of the Empress, says William of Malmesbury, took place immediately after Easter, it was nearly midsummer before the Londoners would receive her.[248] Hence her otherwise strange delay in proceeding to the scene of her coronation. An incidental allusion leads us to believe that this _interregnum_ was marked by tumult and bloodshed in London. We learn that Aubrey de Vere was killed on the 9th of May, in the course of a riot in the city.[249] This event has been assigned by every writer that I have consulted to the May of the previous year (1140), and this is the date assigned in the editor's marginal note.[250] The context, however, clearly shows that it belongs to 1141. Aubrey was a man of some consequence. He had been actively employed by Henry I. in the capacity of justice and of sheriff, and was also a royal chamberlain. His death, therefore, was a notable event, and one is tempted to associate with it the fact that he was father-in-law to Geoffrey. It is not impossible that, on that occasion, they may have been acting in concert, and resisting a popular movement of the citizens, whether directed against the Empress or against Geoffrey himself.
The comparison of the Empress's advance on London with that of her grandfather, in similar circumstances, is of course obvious. The details, however, of the latter are obscure, and Mr. Parker, we must remember, has gravely impugned the account of it given in the _Norman Conquest_.[251]
Of the ten weeks which appear to have elapsed between the election of the Empress and her reception in London, we know little or nothing. Early in May she came to Reading,[252] the Continuator's statement to that effect being confirmed by a charter which, to all appearance, passed on this occasion.[253] It is attested by her three constant companions, the Earl of Gloucester, Brian fitz Count, and Miles of Gloucester (acting as her constable), together with John (fitz Gilbert) the marshal, and her brothers Reginald (now an earl)[254] and Robert (fitz Edith).[255] But a special significance is to be found in the names of the five attesting bishops (Winchester, Lincoln, Ely, St. David's, and Hereford). They are, it will be found, the same five who attest the charter to Geoffrey de Mandeville (midsummer), and they are also the five who (with the Bishop of Bath) had attended, in March, the Empress at Winchester. This creates a strong presumption that, in despite of chroniclers' vague assertions, the number of bishops who joined the Empress was, even if not limited to these, at least extremely small.[256]