The administrative machinery of the state was still in the hands of Bishop Roger of Salisbury and the disciples whom he had trained. Roger himself retained his office of justiciar; the treasurership was held by his nephew, Nigel bishop of Ely, and the chancellorship by one whom he also called his nephew, but who was known to be really his son. This latter was commonly distinguished as “Roger the Poor”—a nickname pointed sarcastically at the enormous wealth of the elder Roger, compared with which that of the younger might pass for poverty. Outwardly, the justiciar stood as high in Stephen’s favour as he had stood in Henry’s; whatever he asked—and he was not slack in asking—was granted at once: “I shall give him the half of my kingdom some day, if he demands it!” was Stephen’s own confession.[803] But the greediness of the one and the lavishness of the other sprang alike from a secret mistrust which the mischief-makers of the court did their utmost to foster. Stephen’s personal friends assured him that the bishop of Salisbury and his nephews were in treasonable correspondence with the Empress, that they were fortifying and revictualling their castles in her behalf, and that the worldly pomp and show, the vast retinue of armed followers, with which they were wont to appear at court, was really intended for the support of her cause.[804] How far the suspicion was correct it is difficult to decide. Roger owed his whole career to King Henry; he had broken his plighted faith to Henry’s child; it is no wonder if his heart smote him for the ungrateful deed. If, on the other hand, that deed had been done from a real sense of duty to the state, a sincere belief in the advantage of Stephen’s rule for England, then it is no wonder if he felt that he had made a grievous mistake, and sought to repair it by a return to his earlier allegiance. But whatever may be thought of the bishop’s conduct, nothing can justify that of the king. At Midsummer 1139 Stephen summoned Bishop Roger to come and speak with him at Oxford. Some foreboding of evil—possibly some consciousness of double-dealing—made the old man very unwilling to go;[805] but he did go, and with him went his son the chancellor, and his two nephews, the treasurer and Alexander bishop of Lincoln,[806] each accompanied by a train of armed knights. Stephen, equally suspicious, bade his men arm themselves likewise, to be ready in case of need. While he was conversing with the bishops in Oxford castle,[807] a dispute about quarters arose between their followers and those of the count of Meulan and Alan of Richmond;[808] a fray ensued, in which Alan’s nephew was nearly killed,[809] whereupon the two Rogers and the bishop of Lincoln were at once seized by the king. Nigel of Ely, who was lodging apart from the others outside the town,[810] escaped, threw himself into his uncle’s castle of Devizes, and prepared to stand a siege.[811]

The town of Devizes stands on a steep escarpment of greensand penetrated by two deep ravines which give it the form of a semicircle with a tongue projecting in the middle. On this tongue of rocky ground, five hundred feet above the level of the sea, the bishop of Salisbury had reared a castle unsurpassed in strength and splendour by any fortress in Europe.[812] At its gates Stephen soon appeared, bringing the two Rogers with him as captives. The elder he lodged in a cowshed, the younger he threatened to hang if the place was not surrendered at once. Its unhappy owner, in terror for his son’s life, vowed neither to eat nor drink till the castle was in the hands of Stephen;[813] but neither his uncle’s fasting nor his cousin’s danger moved Nigel to yield. The keep, however, was held by the chancellor’s mother, Matilda of Ramsbury, and the sight of a rope actually round her son’s neck overcame her resistance. She offered her own life in exchange for his, and the offer being refused, she surrendered. Nigel could only follow her example.[814] Roger’s other castles, Sherborne and Malmesbury, soon fell likewise into the king’s hands, and with them the enormous treasure collected by their owner.[815] Alexander of Lincoln was dragged to the gates of Newark and there kept starving till he induced his people to give up the place; and his other castle, Sleaford, was gained by the same means.[816]

Such an outrage as Stephen had committed could not pass unchallenged. His victims indeed were unpopular enough; but two of them were bishops, and the whole English Church was up in arms at once. And the English Church was no longer without a fully qualified spokesman and leader. That leader, however, was not the new-made primate. The legatine commission held by William of Corbeil was not renewed to his successor in the archbishopric: it was sent instead to the man who had long been the most influential member of the English episcopate—Henry, bishop of Winchester. For nearly four months Henry kept this all-powerful weapon lying idly in the scabbard;[817] now, at the call of duty, neither fear nor love hindered him from drawing it against his own brother. Having vainly dinned into Stephen’s ears, both privately and publicly, his entreaties for the restoration of the two bishops, he fell back upon his legatine powers and cited the king to answer for his conduct before a council at Winchester on August 29.[818]

The council sat for three days, and the case was argued out between Stephen’s advocate Aubrey de Vere, the bishop of Salisbury and the legate. Henry formally charged his brother with sacrilege, in having laid violent hands upon bishops, and appropriated their lands and goods to his own use. Stephen met the charge with the plea which had been used by the Conqueror against Odo of Bayeux—he had arrested the culprits not as bishops, but as unfaithful ministers and disloyal subjects; and the property which he had taken from them they had acquired as private men, in defiance of the canons of the Church. Roger retorted that all these accusations were false; both parties threatened an appeal to Rome, and swords were drawn almost in the council-chamber.[819] The legate and the primate intervened as peacemakers, and a compromise was arranged. It was decreed by the council that all prelates who held fortresses other than those which belonged to their sees should place them under the king’s control, and confine themselves henceforth to their canonical duties and rights.[820] On the other hand, Stephen’s act was solemnly condemned, and he had to lay aside his royal robes and come as an humble penitent to receive the censure of the Church.[821] This humiliation saved him from the ecclesiastical penalties of his misdeed; from its political consequences nothing could save him now. He had filled up the measure of his follies. When the obedience of the barons had been forfeited—when the trust of the people had been shaken—two forces still remained by whose help he might have recovered all that he had lost: the administration and the clergy. At a single blow he had destroyed the one and thrown the other into opposition.

His rivals saw that the hour for which they were vainly waiting in Normandy had struck at last in England. All Geoffrey’s attempts on Normandy had failed. At the expiration of his truce with Theobald of Blois in 1136 the barons of Anjou were again in revolt,[822] and it was not till the end of September that Geoffrey was free to invade the duchy. Its internal confusion was such that the twin earls of Meulan and Leicester (sons of King Henry’s friend Robert), who were trying to govern it for Stephen, had been obliged again to call Count Theobald to their aid; but at sight of the hated “Guirribecs,” as the Angevins were derisively called, the Normans forgot their differences and rose as one man against the common foe. On October 1 Geoffrey was wounded in the right foot while besieging the castle of Le Sap near Lisieux; that night his wife joined him with reinforcements; but the morning had scarcely dawned when, like another Geoffrey of Anjou ninety years earlier, he fled with all his host[823]—not, however, before the military fame of the Norman duke, but before the vengeance of the Norman people. Next spring he again ventured to attack the Hiesmois.[824] Stephen, who was now in Normandy and had just won its investiture from King Louis, prepared to meet the invader; but the jealousies between his Norman and his Flemish troops compelled him to abandon the attempt and make another truce for two years.[825] In April next the Angevins broke the truce;[826] in June Robert of Gloucester openly declared for them, and under his influence Bayeux and Caen surrendered to Geoffrey. The count of Anjou retired, however, before a threatened attack from Stephen’s cousin Ralf of Vermandois, in conjunction with Waleran of Meulan and William of Ypres.[827] Early in October he made an unsuccessful attempt upon Falaise.[828] In November he marched upon Toucques, then one of the most flourishing seaport towns of Normandy. The burghers were taken captive “seated in their own arm-chairs,” and in their comfortable houses the Angevins, after feasting to their heart’s content, settled themselves carelessly for the night. But their presence was known to William Trussebut, the governor of the neighbouring castle of Bonneville; and at dead of night a band of desperate characters, purposely chosen for a desperate deed, came by his orders from Bonneville to Toucques, dispersed silently throughout the town, and fired it in forty-five places. The Angevins, wakened by the cries of the watchmen and the roaring of the flames, fled headlong, leaving their arms, horses and baggage behind them. William Trussebut had come forth at the head of his men to intercept their flight, but the smoke and the darkness were such that neither party could distinguish friends from foes. Geoffrey, bewildered as he was, managed to bring some of his men to a stand in a cemetery; there the rest of the Angevin force gradually collected, and waited, in shame and trembling, for the day. At the first gleam of morning they fled, and never stopped till they had buried themselves and their disgrace safe within the walls of Argentan.[829] This time the Normans had taught Geoffrey a lesson which he did not soon forget; he did not venture to meddle with them again for more than two years. Neither he nor his wife made any movement at all till late in the following summer, when a prospect was opened for them beyond the sea by Stephen’s arrest of the two bishops. The council of Winchester broke up on the first of September;[830] on the thirtieth the Empress was in England.