Stephen, King of England
Stephen (1092/6 – 25 October 1154), often referred to as Stephen of Blois, was King of England from 22 December 1135 to his death.
He was Count of Boulogne from 1125 until 1147 and Duke of Normandy from 1135 until 1144.
His reign was marked by the Anarchy, a civil war with his cousin and rival, the Empress Matilda, whose son, Henry II, succeeded Stephen as the first of the Angevin kings of England.
Stephen was born in the County of Blois in central France; his father, Count Stephen-Henry, died while Stephen was still young, and he was brought up by his mother, Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror.
Placed into the court of his uncle, Henry I of England, Stephen rose in prominence and was granted extensive lands.
He married Matilda of Boulogne, inheriting additional estates in Kent and Boulogne that made the couple one of the wealthiest in England.
Stephen narrowly escaped drowning with Henry I's son, William Adelin, in the sinking of the "White Ship" in 1120; William's death left the succession of the English throne open to challenge.
When Henry died in 1135, Stephen quickly crossed the English Channel and with the help of his brother Henry, Bishop of Winchester and Abbot of Glastonbury, took the throne, arguing that the preservation of order across the kingdom took priority over his earlier oaths to support the claim of Henry I's daughter, the Empress Matilda.
The early years of Stephen's reign were largely successful, despite a series of attacks on his possessions in England and Normandy by David I of Scotland, Welsh rebels, and the Empress Matilda's husband Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou.
In 1138, the Empress's half-brother Robert of Gloucester rebelled against Stephen, threatening civil war.
Together with his close advisor, Waleran de Beaumont, Stephen took firm steps to defend his rule, including arresting a powerful family of bishops.
When the Empress and Robert invaded in 1139, Stephen was unable to crush the revolt rapidly, and it took hold in the south-west of England.
Captured at the battle of Lincoln in 1141, he was abandoned by many of his followers and lost control of Normandy.
He was freed only after his wife and William of Ypres, one of his military commanders, captured Robert at the Rout of Winchester, but the war dragged on for many years with neither side able to win an advantage.
Stephen became increasingly concerned with ensuring that his son Eustace would inherit his throne.
The King tried to convince the Church to agree to crown Eustace to reinforce his claim; Pope Eugene III refused, and Stephen found himself in a sequence of increasingly bitter arguments with his senior clergy.
In 1153 the Empress's son, Henry FitzEmpress, invaded England and built an alliance of powerful regional barons to support his claim for the throne.
The two armies met at Wallingford, but neither side's barons were keen to fight another pitched battle.
Stephen began to examine a negotiated peace, a process hastened by the sudden death of Eustace.
Later in the year Stephen and Henry agreed to the Treaty of Winchester, in which Stephen recognised Henry as his heir in exchange for peace, passing over William, Stephen's second son.
Stephen died the following year.
Modern historians have extensively debated the extent to which his personality, external events, or the weaknesses in the Norman state contributed to this prolonged period of civil war.
Arnulf II, Count of Boulogne
Arnulf II of Boulogne( † 972) was a son of Count Adalolf.
He succeeded as Count of Boulogne in 964 after the death of his uncle Arnulf I, and held it until his own death.
He was the father of Arnulf III, Count of Boulogne.
He is the ancestor of Ruler of Jerusalem Godfrey of Bouillon.
Baldwin II, Count of Boulogne
Baldwin II of Boulogne was a son of Arnulf III, Count of Boulogne, whom he succeeded as count of Boulogne.
Matthew, Count of Boulogne
Matthew, Count of Boulogne, also known as" Matthew of Alsace"( – 1173) was the second son of Thierry, Count of Flanders and Sibylla of Anjou.
Matthew forcibly abducted the nun Marie de Boulogne, daughter of Stephen, King of England, and constrained her into marriage, claiming the title of Count of Boulogne in 1160.
The forced marriage was opposed by the Church and finally annulled in 1170, but he continued to rule as Count until his death.
Matthew and Marie had 2 daughters: Ida, Countess of Boulogne, and Maud of Boulogne.
Maud married Henry I, Duke of Brabant.
In 1171, Matthew married Eleanor, daughter of Ralph I, Count of Vermandois, they had one short- lived daughter.
He was a supporter of Henry the Young King, and received lands in England.
He died fighting at the siege of Trenton( now Neufchatel- en- Bray), in the 1173 – 74 revolt of Henry II of England's sons, under the leadership of Philip of Flanders.
Wounded by a crossbow bolt, he did not recover.
Adelina of Holland
Adelina of Holland was possibly a daughter of Arnulf, Count of Holland, and Lutgardis of Luxemburg.
She married firstly Baldwin II, Count of Boulogne( with whom she had Eustace I of Boulogne), and secondly Enguerrand I of Ponthieu.
Emmanuel Cummings
Emmanuel Cummings was a mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, and was the father of Eustace Henry Taylor Cummings, who later became a mayor of Freetown.
Arnulf III, Count of Boulogne
Arnulf III of Boulogne( † 990) was a son of Arnulf II, Count of Boulogne.
He succeeded his father as count of Boulogne from 972 to 990.
On his death his lands were divided between his three sons:
Eustace I, Count of Boulogne
Eustace I, Count of Boulogne, was a nobleman and founder of the Boulogne branch of the House of Flanders.
He held the county of Boulogne from 1024 until his death in 1049.
Matilda II, Countess of Boulogne
Mahaut or Matilda II of Boulogne( also known as" Mathilde Maud de Dammartin"; 1202 – January 1259) was Countess of Boulogne in her own right and Queen of Portugal by marriage to King Afonso III from 1248 until their divorce in 1253.
She was the daughter of Ida, Countess of Boulogne and her husband and co-ruler Renaud, Count of Dammartin.
She succeeded her mother as Countess of Boulogne in 1216.
She was the great- granddaughter of King Stephen of England.
Eustace IV, Count of Boulogne
Eustace IV (c. 1127–113517 August 1153), Count of Boulogne, was the eldest son of King Stephen of England and Countess Matilda I of Boulogne.
When his father seized the English throne on Henry I's death in 1135, he became heir apparent to the English throne.
Upon his mother's death in 1152 he inherited the county of Boulogne and other estates.
Eustace was first mentioned in one of his parents' charters dated no later than August 1131.
As heir to the English throne in 1137, he did homage for Normandy to Louis VII of France, whose sister, Constance, he subsequently married in 1140 (as a widow she remarried to Count Raymond V of Toulouse).
Eustace was knighted in 1147, at which date he was probably from sixteen to eighteen years of age.
In 1151 he joined his brother-in-law Louis VII in a raid upon Normandy.
This was short-lived, however, when Louis accepted Henry Plantagenet's homage for the Normandy.
The following year, he was in France as part of a wider coalition of Henry's enemies, but Henry's control of the duchy remained unshaken.
In the later stages of the period known as The Anarchy, Stephen was concerned with cementing Eustace as his heir without question.
At a council held in London on 6 April 1152, Stephen induced a small number of barons to pay homage to Eustace as their future king; but the Archbishop of Canterbury, Theobald of Bec, and the other bishops declined to perform the coronation ceremony on the grounds that the Roman curia had declined Stephen's request to use the Capetian custom and crown Eustace in his own lifetime, opting
rather they stick to English custom, thus denying Eustace his coronation.
After the second siege of Wallingford in July 1153, after Henry had invaded England and attracted widespread support, Stephen was persuaded to agree to terms.
This later became known as the Treaty of Winchester.
This cemented Henry as Stephen's heir.
Eustace withdrew from the court as a result of this, "greatly vexed and angry, because the war, in his opinion, had not reached a proper conclusion".
Eustace died suddenly the next year, in early August 1153, struck down (so it was said) by the wrath of God while plundering church lands near Bury St Edmunds.
Others believe that Eustace died simply of a broken heart.
The death of Eustace was hailed with general satisfaction as opening the possibility of a peaceful settlement between Stephen and his rival, the young Henry of Anjou.
According to William of Newburgh, Stephen was "grieved beyond measure by the death of the son whom he hoped would succeed him; he pursued warlike preparations less vigorously, and listened more patiently than usual to the voices of those urging peace."
The reputation Eustace left behind was mixed.
On the one hand, 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."
Eustace raided church lands near Peterborough, possibly inciting this hatred from the "Chronicle".
He had used threats against the recalcitrant bishops, and in the war against the Angevin party had demanded contributions from religious houses.
However, the "Gesta Stephani" describes his courtly manner as a true heir to Stephen able to "meet men on a footing of equality or superiority as the occasion acquired".
Eustace was buried in Faversham Abbey in Kent, which was founded by his parents.
They too were buried in Faversham Abbey; all three tombs are now lost, as a consequence of the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Question: Where was the father of Eustace Iv, Count Of Boulogne born?