But though the legate could open to the Empress the cathedral and the cathedral city, he had no power over the royal castle. This we saw in the case of Stephen, when his efforts to secure the constable's adherence were fruitless till the king himself arrived. Probably the constable, at this crisis, was the same William de Pont de l'Arche, but, whoever he was, he surrendered to the Empress the castle and all that it contained. In one respect, indeed, she was doomed to be bitterly disappointed, for the royal treasury, which her adventurous rival had found filled to overflowing, was by this time all but empty. One treasure, however, she secured; the object of her desires, the royal crown, was placed in her triumphant hands.[196] To the one historian who has dealt with this incident it has proved a stumbling-block indeed. Mr. Freeman thus boldly attacks the problem:— "William of Malmesbury (_Hist. Nov._, iii. 42) seems distinctly to exclude a coronation; he merely says, 'Honorifica factâ processione, recepta est in ecclesia episcopatus Wintoniæ.' We must, therefore, see only rhetoric when the Continuator says, 'Datur ejus dominio corona Angliæ,' and when the author of the _Gesta_ (75) speaks of 'regisque castello, et regni coronâ, quam semper ardentissime affectârat, ... in deliberationem suam contraditis,' and adds that Henry 'dominam et _reginam_ acclamare præcepit.' The Waverley Annalist, 1141, ventures to say, 'Corona regni est ei tradita.'"[197] "Only rhetoric." Ah, how easily could history be written, if one could thus dispose of inconvenient evidence! So far from being "rhetoric," it is precisely because these statements are so strictly matter-of-fact that the writer failed to grasp their meaning. Had he known, or remembered, that the royal crown was preserved in the royal treasury, the passage by which he is so sorely puzzled would have proved simplicity itself.[198] Here again, light is thrown on these events and on the action of the Empress by the precedent in the case of her father (1100), who, on the death of his brother, hastened to Winchester Castle ("ubi regalis thesaurus continebatur"), which was formally handed over to him with all that it contained ("arx cum regalibus gazis filio regis Henrico reddita est").[199] We have yet to consider the passage from the _Gesta_, to which Mr. Birch so confidently appeals, and which is dismissed by Mr. Freeman as "rhetoric." The passage runs:— "In publica se civitatis et fori audientia dominam et reginam acclamare præcepit."[200]