During the reign of Henry II. the Crown recovered much of its power, and Lincoln Castle seems to have been dissociated from the earldom, although the Earl of Chester preserved a hold upon it. Richard de Hay held the constableship in fee, and it descended to his daughter and heiress, Nicholaa, who married Gerald de Camville, who received from Richard I. the custody of the castle and the farm of the revenues of the county. Gerald, however, was a partisan of Prince John, and stood a siege in the castle from Longchamp, chancellor to the absent Richard. The castle was relieved by John; but Gerard lost his office and farm in 1194, until John became king. His widow, Nicholaa, held the castle for the king against the insurgent lords. After the war, King John visited Lincoln, and Nicholaa, then of great age, received him at the east gate of the castle, and offered him the keys, desiring to be relieved on account of her age. John gracefully requested her to retain the keys, and she continued in command through the reign of John, and into that of Henry his son. Nicholaa was sheriff of the county, and a very remarkable person. In her latter days she had an assistant assigned to her, and a manor to support the charges of her office. She finally retired, and died in 1231. In 1216, towards the close of John’s reign, Gilbert de Gant, nephew to the former Earl of Lincoln of the same name, condescended to accept the titular rank at the hands of the invading French Prince Louis, and took the city, but not the castle. He fought and was taken at the “Fair of Lincoln,” in May, 1217, by Ranulph de Blondville, Earl of Chester, a man of small stature but a great soldier, who added the title of Lincoln to that of Chester four days after the battle, and held it until he resigned it to his sister, Hawise de Quincy, in 1232. The actual relief introduced into the castle before the battle was led by the notorious Fulk de Breauté. The descent of the constableship of the castle is at this point rather obscure. It seems, probably during the minority of De Camville’s daughter and heiress, Idonea, to have been administered successively by Philip de Lascelles, Walter Evermue, and, in 1224, by William de Longespée, Earl of Salisbury, probably as having married Idonea, daughter and heiress of Gerard de Camville. Whether their son William, who died 1257, held it is uncertain, but whatever rights he had were united to those of the Earls of Lincoln by the marriage of his daughter and heiress, Margaret Longespée, to Henry de Lacy. Henry was descended from Hawise de Quincy, whose daughter Margaret carried the earldom to her husband John de Lacy, who died 1240. Their son, Edmond, did not live to inherit; but his son, Henry de Lacy, was Earl of Lincoln, and by his marriage with Margaret Longespée, earl also of Salisbury. In the Escheat Roll, 4 Edward II., he is entered as constable of the castle of Lincoln.