ABSTRACT
The last disaster for the empress in 1143 was the untimely death of Miles, earl of Hereford. One of his household knights accidentally pierced him in the chest with an arrow while attempting to hit a deer while out hunting on Christmas Eve. 1 In some ways, this death is as significant as the rebellion of Geoffrey de Mandeville - not so much because it removed a trusted and close adviser from the empress's side (although that was serious enough) but because it brought forward a new and forbidding political talent, Miles's son, Earl Roger. Earl Roger was a pragmatic young man, who had been closely engaged in the war alongside his father. But he had apparently developed during this period an insouciant attitude to the claims of the party which his father had supported in a more wholehearted way. Earl Roger's actions from 1144 onwards reveal a man who had assessed the situation of the civil war as being incapable of resolution. His strategy was therefore to seek to avoid battle and maintain his property and influence in any way that he could. It was the likes of Earl Roger who were the principals in negotiating what R.H.C. Davis memorably called the 'magnates' peace'.
