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Eustace, French Eustache, Count of Boulogne (from 1150) and eldest son of King Stephen of England and his wife Matilda, daughter and heiress of the previous count of Boulogne (Eustace III). Eustace IV did homage for Normandy (1137) to Louis VII, king of France, whose sister Constance he later married (1140), and he was several times used by the king as an opponent to the claims on the Norman duchy made by the counts of Anjou. At a council held in London on April 6, 1152, King Stephen induced some English barons to pay homage to his son Eustace as their future king, but Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, on the command of Pope Eugenius III, refused to crown him. Eustace, whom contemporaries respected only as a soldier, was killed while plundering the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk. His death made possible a settlement of the civil war between Stephen and the empress Matilda. Stephen designated as his heir Matilda's son Henry of Anjou, afterward Henry II of England. http://en.wikipedia.org Another version: Eustace IV (c. 1130 - August 1153) was a Count of Boulogne and the son and heir of King Stephen of England. He became the heir-apparent to his father's lands by the death of an elder brother before 1135. In 1137, he did homage for Normandy to Louis VII of France, whose sister, Constance, he subsequently married. Eustace was knighted in 1147, at which date he was probably from sixteen to eighteen years of age. In 1151 he joined Louis in an abortive raid upon Normandy, which had accepted the title of the Empress Maud, and was now defended by her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou. At a council held in London on April 6, 1152, Stephen induced a small number of barons to do homage to Eustace as their future king; but the primate, Theobald, and the other bishops declined to perform the coronation ceremony on the grounds that the Roman curia had declared against the claim of Eustace. The death of Eustace, which occurred during the next year, was hailed with general satisfaction as opening the possibility of a peaceful settlement between Stephen and his rival, the young Henry of Anjou. The Peterborough Chronicle, not content with voicing this sentiment, gives Eustace a bad character. "He was an evil man and did more harm than good wherever he went; he spoiled the lands and laid thereon heavy taxes." He had used threats against the recalcitrant bishops, and in the war against the Angevin party had demanded contributions from religious houses; these facts perhaps suffice to account for the verdict of the chronicler. http://en.wikipedia.org
William B.
