Before the era of the Great Charter, however, Bishop Hugh had been carried to his last resting-place on the shoulders of King John and the two sub-kings of Scotland and Wales, and the place which he had filled with so much honour was occupied by Henry Welles, a prelate who resolutely espoused the cause of the Anglo-Norman barons and their “good Lord Louis.” Nevertheless, the royal cause was well supported in Lincoln, and its adherents were headed by a dame somewhat like the widowed Countess Albemarle, whom the chronicler describes as “a woman almost a man, being deficient in nothing masculine but manhood.” It seems that, in the reign of Richard Cœur-de-Lion, Gerard de Camville held the castle of Lincoln, “the custody whereof was known to belong to the inheritance of Nichola, the wife of the same Gerard, but under the king.” However, when Richard was absent in the East, on his way to the Holy Land, and when a feud broke out between Prince John and the Bishop of Ely, who was chancellor and regent of the kingdom, Gerard took part with John, and, in his absence, the castle of Lincoln was besieged by the chancellor-bishop. “But,” says the chronicler, “Nichola, proposing to herself nothing effeminate, defended the castle like a man.” In fact, she held out till the siege was raised. Nichola de Camville was now a widow, and could not have been young. But neither her courage nor her energy had departed; and though Gilbert de Gant, whom Prince Louis had rewarded with an earldom before he conquered, had been exerting himself strenuously to take Lincoln, his efforts had been in vain; the royal standard still waved over the town and castle when the Count de Perche and Robert Fitzwalter brought their army to the besiegers’ aid. The arrival of a force so formidable, however, soon changed the face of matters, and the town surrendered. But the castle showed no signs of being likely to yield; and De Perche and his Anglo-Norman allies were fain to commence a very systematic siege, bringing into play their engines of war, battering the walls with huge stones, and hurling other missiles against the garrison. However, they had great confidence in their numbers and in their warlike engines; and they were pressing the siege on the morning of Saturday, the 20th of May, with high hopes of a speedy success, when informed by their scouts that the English were approaching in hostile array with banners displayed. The Count de Perche at first treated the intelligence with something like indifference, and continued to direct the soldiers, who were hurling missiles from the “mangonels” to destroy the walls of the castle. But Robert Fitzwalter and the Earl of Winchester did not take the matter so coolly. Mounting their horses forthwith, the two barons rode out to survey Pembroke’s army, and returned somewhat flurried, elate with the idea of their own superiority as regarded numbers.