condition of their
tenures naturally surrounded them with armed retainers. That this
anomalous position should have corrupted the ambitious churchman into a
proud and luxurious lord was almost inevitable. The authority of the
Crown might have been strong enough to repress the individual
discontent, or to punish the individual treason, of these great
prelates; but every one of them was doubly formidable as a member of a
confederacy over which a foreign head claimed to preside. There were
three bishops whose intrigues King Stephen had especially to dread at
the time when an open war for the succession of Matilda was on the point
of bursting forth. Roger, the Bishop of Salisbury, had been promoted
from the condition of a parish priest at Caen, to be chaplain,
secretary, chancellor, and chief justiciary of Henry I. He was
instrumental in the election of Stephen to the throne; and he was
rewarded with extravagant gifts, as he had been previously rewarded by
Henry. Stephen appears to have fostered his rapacity, in the conviction
that his pride would have a speedier fall; the King often saying, "I
would give him half England, if he asked for it: till the time be ripe
he shall tire of asking ere I tire of giving." The time was ripe in
1139. The Bishop had erected castles at Devizes, at Sherborne, and at
Malmesbury. King Henry had given him the castle of Salisbury. This lord
of four castles had powerful auxiliaries in his nephews, the Bishop of
Lincoln and the Bishop of Ely. Alexander of Lincoln had built the
castles of Newark and Sleaford, and was almost as powerful as his uncle.
In July, 1139, a great council was held at Oxford; and thither came
these three bishops with military and secular pomp, and with an escort
that became "the wonder of all beholders." A quarrel ensued between the
retainers of the bishops and those of Alain, Earl of Brittany, about a
right to quarters; and the quarrel went on to a battle, in which men
were slain on both sides. The bishops of Salisbury and Lincoln were
arrested, as breakers of the king's peace. The Bishop of Ely fled to his
uncle's castle of Devizes. The King, under the advice of the sagacious
Earl Millent, resolved to dispossess these dangerous prelates of their
fortresses, which were all finally surrendered. "The bishops, humbled
and mortified, and stripped of all pomp and vainglory, were reduced to a
simple ecclesiastical life, and to the possessions belonging to them as
churchmen." The