At some period in the course of the year (1143) after this council—possibly about the end of September—the king held a court at St. Albans, to which, it would seem, there came the leading nobles of the realm.[619] Among them was the Earl of Essex, still at the height of his power. Of what passed on this occasion we have, from independent quarters, several brief accounts.[620] Of the main fact there is no question. Stephen, acting on that sudden impulse which roused him at times to unwonted vigour, struck at last, and struck home. The mighty earl was seized and bound, and according to the regular practice throughout this internecine warfare, the surrender of the castles on which his strength was based was made the price of his liberty. As with the arrest of the bishops at Oxford in 1139, so was it now with the arrest of the great earl at St. Albans, and so it was again to be at Northampton, with the arrest of the Earl of Chester some three years later. What it was that decided Stephen to seize this moment for thus reasserting his authority, it is not so easy to say. William of Newburgh, who is fullest on the subject, gives us the story, which is found nowhere else, of the earl's outrage on the king more than three years before,[621] and tells us that Stephen had been ever since awaiting an opportunity for revenge.[622] He adds that the height of power to which the earl had attained had filled the king with dread, and hints, I think, obscurely at that great conspiracy of which the earl, as we have seen, was the pivot and the moving spirit.[623] Henry of Huntingdon plainly asserts that his seizure was a necessity for the king, who would otherwise have lost his crown through the King-maker's treacherous schemes.[624] We may, indeed, safely believe that the time had now come when Stephen felt that it must be decided whether he or Geoffrey were master.[625] But, as with the arrest of the bishops at Oxford four years before, so, at this similar crisis, his own feelings and his own jealousy of a power beneath which he chafed were assiduously fostered and encouraged by a faction among the nobles themselves. This is well brought out in the Chronicle of Walden Abbey,[626] and still more so in the _Gesta_. It is there distinctly asserted that this faction worked upon the king, by reminding him of Geoffrey's unparalleled power, and of his intention to declare for the Empress, urging him to arrest the earl as a traitor, to seize his castles and crush his power, and so to secure safety for himself and peace for his troubled realm.[627] It is added that, Stephen hesitating to take the decisive step, the jealousy of the barons blazed forth suddenly into open strife, taunts and threats being hurled at one another by the earl and his infuriated opponents.[628] On the king endeavouring to allay the tumult, the earl was charged to his face with plotting treason. Called upon to rebut the charge, he did not attempt to do so, but laughed with cynical scorn.