Eustace IVArticle Free Pass Eustace IV, French Eustache (died
August 17?, 1153, near Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England),
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 Mat