[Sidenote:  Seizure of the Bishops]

Weak indeed as Stephen was, the administrative organization of Henry still did its work.  Roger remained justiciar, his son was chancellor, his nephew Nigel, the Bishop of Ely, was treasurer.  Finance and justice were thus concentrated in the hands of a single family which preserved amidst the deepening misrule something of the old order and rule, and which stood at the head of the “new men,” whom Henry had raised into importance and made the instruments of his will.  These new men were still weak by the side of the older nobles; and conscious of the jealousy and ill-will with which they were regarded they followed in self-defence the example which the barons were setting in building and fortifying castles on their domains.  Roger and his house, the objects from their official position of a deeper grudge than any, were carried away by the panic.  The justiciar and his son fortified their castles, and it was only with a strong force at their back that the prelates appeared at court.  Their attitude was one to rouse Stephen’s jealousy, and the news of Matilda’s purpose of invasion lent strength to the doubts which the nobles cast on their fidelity.  All the weak violence of the king’s temper suddenly broke out.  He seized Roger the Chancellor and the Bishop of Lincoln when they appeared at Oxford in June 1139, and forced them to surrender their strongholds.  Shame broke the justiciar’s heart; he died at the close of the year, and his nephew Nigel of Ely was driven from the realm.  But the fall of this house shattered the whole system of government.  The King’s Court and the Exchequer ceased to work at a moment when the landing of Earl Robert and the Empress Matilda set Stephen face to face with a danger greater than he had yet encountered, while the clergy, alienated by the arrest of the Bishops and the disregard of their protests, stood angrily aloof.

[Sidenote:  Civil War]

The three bases of Henry’s system of government, the subjection of the baronage to the law, the good-will of the Church, and the organization of justice and finance, were now utterly ruined; and for the fourteen years which passed from this hour to the Treaty of Wallingford England was given up to the miseries of civil war.  The country was divided between the adherents of the two rivals, the West supporting Matilda, London and the East Stephen.  A defeat at Lincoln in 1141 left the latter a captive in the hands of his enemies, while Matilda was received throughout the land as its “Lady.”  But the disdain with which she repulsed the claim of London to the enjoyment of its older privileges called its burghers to arms; her resolve to hold Stephen a prisoner roused his party again to life, and she was driven to Oxford to be besieged there in 1142 by Stephen himself, who had obtained his release in exchange for Earl Robert after the capture of the Earl in a battle at Winchester.  She escaped from the castle, but with the death of