Following the death of Henry I, medieval England was plunged into a civil war that reduced the country to a charred ruin. With the barons split between rival claimants, the people suffered. Stephen (left) and Henry II, from Les Roys de Engeltere, Anglo-Norman manuscript, late 13th century. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved / Bridgeman Images I n the summer of 1153 a broken man agreed to disinherit his son, in order to end a war that had splintered England into pieces for 19 years. The English reign of King Stephen (1135-54) was a disaster from start to finish, a time of such chaos that it was later dubbed ‘the Anarchy’. The background to the conflict is well known: Henry I, having lost his only legitimate son in the wreck of the White Ship in 1120, named his daughter Matilda as his heir.…