The remote and rather dreary reign of King Stephen recently has had great appeal to contemporary historians and several distinguished scholars have carefully analyzed it. Indeed, who would have thought that a study of medieval government in a troubled time, always interesting on its own terms, would seem so pertinent, especially to concerned Americans? Since the Watergate revelations, nearly everyone observed a declining confidence in our national leadership. Journalists, politicians, and private citizens continually asked whether the president had lost the ability to govern. Barons, bishops, and burgers discussed similar questions in King Stephen's time—in 1135, in 1139, in 1141, and in 1153—and yet their king and country survived. Our nation also surmounted its series of crises and the consoling lesson of both trying periods may well be that the salvation of necessary administrative institutions and the preservation of relative prosperity depend far more upon the loyalty, dedication, and service of barely visible, self-effacing governmental bureaucrats than it does upon any one leader's personal skill, principal advisors, or private morals.

Generations of young men have grown old safely categorizing King Stephen's days as “The Anarchy” and their professors still regale other eager students with the Peterborough chronicler's description of that time in England when “Christ and His angels slept” and “we suffered nineteen winters for our sins.”