Eustace IV held Boulogne for barely three years before dying in August 1153 — reportedly of illness contracted after he seized grain from the monastery of Bury St Edmunds, an act contemporaries were quick to frame as divine punishment. His death proved consequential far beyond the county: as the only surviving son of King Stephen of England, it cleared the path for the Angevin succession and the eventual accession of Henry II.
The extreme brevity of his comital tenure makes this denier one of the shorter-lived issues in the northern French feudal series.
Eustace IV held Boulogne for barely three years before dying in August 1153 — reportedly of illness contracted after he seized grain from the monastery of Bury St Edmunds, an act contemporaries were quick to frame as divine punishment. His death proved consequential far beyond the county: as the only surviving son of King Stephen of England, it cleared the path for the Angevin succession and the eventual accession of Henry II.
The extreme brevity of his comital tenure makes this denier one of the shorter-lived issues in the northern French feudal series.