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Essex,and Stephen endowed three, at Furness in Lancashire, Buckfast in Devon and Longvilliers, across the Channel in Montreuil.
    Matilda and Stephen also continued their close family association with the Cluniac order, which had received Matilda’s father and to which Stephen’s mother, too, had retired before her death. Matilda’s mother, Mary of Scotland, was buried in the Cluniac house at Bermondsey in 1115, and when Stephen came to endow Faversham, a colony of the faithful was sent from Bermondsey to inaugurate the community. Another strand of the reformed Benedictine order was the Cistercians, whose house at Clairmarais also enjoyed royal patronage. Matilda was also interested in the crusading traditions of her own and her husband’s families, and she supported the order of the Templars, who protected and financed the crusaders. The first documented English grant to the Templars was made by Matilda’s father, Eustace, and the Queen herself founded Cressing Temple in Essex in 1137 and Temple Cowley in Oxfordshire in 1139. The grand master of the order, Osto of Boulogne, witnessed two of Matilda’s charters as well as the treaty which eventually ended the civil war. Providing for the crusades was an active form of piety that appealed to Matilda’s ‘dauntless and decisive nature … accustomed to command. If she could not lead the knights of Christ against the enemies of the Church, she could at least provision them.’ 4
    Religion was central to the lives of all aristocrats at the time, and daily attendance at Mass was a feature of the royal household, but Stephen and Matilda’s mutual enthusiasm for exploring new spiritual movements suggests that their religious life was very much a shared one, gesturing towards their closeness as a couple. As well as their religious affinities, both families had a strong tradition of educating their women. Stephen’s grandmother Matilda of Flanders had ensured that her children were well schooled, and Countess Adela, his mother, was a notable patron, praised by the poet Godfrey of Reims, who went as far as to suggest that God had arranged the battle of Hastings in order that she might become a princess. Adela corresponded with her husband when he was on crusade; she wrote, too, to Archbishop Anselm, from whom she requested prayers in manuscript, and Hugh de Fleury, who dedicated his Historia Ecclesiastica to her. She also demonstrated publicly that she was able to speak Latin. Adela combined intellectualism and spirituality with the capacity for government she had inherited from both her parents and, after the death of her husband, she was active in ruling Blois, Chartres and Meaux until her retirement. Matilda’s mother, Mary of Scotland, had enjoyed the same excellent education at the convents of Wilton and Romsey as her sisterand, probably at her instigation, Matilda of Boulogne was also educated in England. Her own daughter Mary eventually became abbess of Romsey, linking the women of Matilda’s family over three generations with this centre of feminine piety and scholarship. Stephen, then, was accustomed to the company of cultivated women, and his consistent reliance on his wife’s advice and diplomacy indicates both trust and a respect for her intelligence.
    Other evidence of the intimacy between Stephen and Matilda is the fact that Stephen, unlike the spectacularly promiscuous Henry I, is known to have been faithful to his wife. He had taken a mistress, as was almost expected of young aristocrats, before his marriage, and had a child by her in 1110, but he showed himself uxorious even in his arrangements for sin. ‘Damette’, or ‘Little Lady’, as his mistress was referred to, was firmly paid off when Stephen married, but their son, Gervase, was educated and entered the Church, eventually becoming abbot of Westminster. The only whiff of scandal attaching to the liaison came when Gervase arranged for his mother, ostensibly a woman of modest means, to rent the