emerged during the Victorian era traced a progressive and universalist course of political and economic development in England over the medieval period. William Stubbs focused on these constitutional aspects of Stephen's reign in his 1874 volume the Constitutional History of England, beginning an enduring interest in Stephen and his reign. Stubbs' analysis, focusing on the disorder of the period, influenced his student John Round to coin the term "the Anarchy" to describe the period, a label that, whilst sometimes critiqued, continues to be used today. The late-Victorian scholar Frederic William Maitland also introduced the possibility that Stephen's reign marked a turning point in English legal history—the so-called "tenurial crisis". Stephen remains a popular subject for historical study: David Crouch suggests that after King John he is "arguably the most written-about medieval king of England". Modern historians vary in their assessments of Stephen as a king. Historian R. H. C. Davis's influential biography paints a picture of a weak king: a capable military leader in the field, full of activity and pleasant, but "beneath the surface ... mistrustful and sly", with poor strategic judgement that ultimately undermined his reign. Stephen's lack of sound policy judgement and his mishandling of international affairs, leading to the loss of Normandy and his consequent inability to win the civil war in England, is also highlighted by another of his biographers, David Crouch. Historian and biographer Edmund King, whilst painting a slightly more positive picture than Davis, also concludes that Stephen, while a stoic, pious and genial leader, was also rarely, if ever, his own man, usually relying upon stronger characters such as his wife, Matilda, and brother Henry. Historian Keith Stringer provides a more positive portrayal of Stephen, arguing that his ultimate failure as king was the result of external pressures on the Norman state, rather than the result of personal failings. Popular representations Stephen and his reign have been occasionally used in historical fiction. Stephen and his supporters appear in Ellis Peters' historical detective series The Cadfael Chronicles, set between 1137 and 1145. Peters' depiction of Stephen's reign is an essentially local narrative, focused on the town of Shrewsbury and its environs. Peters paints Stephen as a tolerant man and a reasonable ruler, despite his execution of the Shrewsbury defenders after the taking of the city in 1138. In contrast, he is depicted unsympathetically in both Ken Follett's historical novel The Pillars of the