The Christmas court was held at Winchester. On former occasions the King, when he visited that city, seems to have been entertained by his tutor, in the episcopal palace or castle of Wolvesey; this time, however, the royal castle on the hill-top was specially made ready for his abode.[832] During the festival season {1221–1222} a quarrel broke out between Earl Ranulf of Chester on the one part and the Earl of Salisbury and the Justiciar on the other. High words passed, and Chester seems to have uttered some threat of violence, for we hear that “the Earl of Salisbury and the Justiciar, the governors of the King and kingdom, manfully prepared themselves and their followers for resistance.” Fortunately, however, there was now one member of the royal Council who was outside of and above all party or personal disputes, and whose position and character alike marked him out for the office of peacemaker. For six years the Archbishop of Canterbury had been reduced to a subordinate position, ecclesiastical and political, by the presence in England of a Papal Legate; and during the last nine months of Pandulf’s legation Stephen had been out of the country altogether. But he had now come back to his old place as the highest ecclesiastical authority in the realm and the first adviser of the Crown. “Pitying the King’s youth and lack of power,” he called his suffragans together in council in London at Hilary-tide (1222), and in concert with them threatened to “wield the spiritual sword against disturbers of the realm and assailants of the King.” This threat brought the contending parties to “concord and peace.”[833] Of the subject and origin of this quarrel we know nothing. The sole writer who mentions it tells us that “it was said, and many persons throughout England suspected and asserted, that the foreigners, who were more desirous of disturbance than of peace in the realm, were trying to stir up the Earl of Chester to give trouble to the King and disquiet the kingdom.” Who were the particular “foreigners” thus accused by rumour, who were the persons that spread the rumour, and what it was that Chester really did, or threatened to do, or was suspected of intending to do, is absolutely unknown. So far as the evidence goes, the dispute may have been a purely personal one, and the Archbishop’s strong measure may have been taken for the purpose of emphasizing the scandal and the possible danger involved in a brawl at the King’s court between men of such high rank and importance, rather than for that of checking any actual or even supposed design of political disturbance or rebellion. [Sidenote: 1222]