While matters were thus strained between the bishop and the king, Stephen, who had witnessed with alarm the growth of the castle-building and the power of the barons, determined to enforce his authority upon them. He called on several of the bishops to surrender their castles, and, being met by refusal, treated the Bishops of Lincoln and Salisbury with such cruelty and personal indignity that the latter died from the hardships inflicted on him. This act of unparalleled folly--for the person of a bishop was regarded as sacred--not only estranged public sympathy, but fanned to active flame the smouldering resentment of Bishop Henry. As Papal Legate he summoned Stephen to answer for his conduct before him at a council held at Winchester, and here the king was not only condemned, but even obliged to do penance. Stephen’s position was gravely compromised, and Matilda’s supporters, who had long bided their time, broke into active opposition. Robert, Earl of Gloucester, her half-brother, took up arms in her behalf; Matilda landed at Arundel; and Stephen in fighting at Lincoln was taken prisoner. Such an event seemed a token from heaven. Bishop Henry openly espoused Matilda’s cause; he proclaimed her at Winchester as “Lady of the English.” The city opened its gates to her, and she marched in in triumphal procession with all her forces and took possession of the Castle, while the occasion was celebrated by a solemn service of rejoicing in the Cathedral. But this state of things was not to last. Arrogant and impracticable, she quickly alienated her own supporters, and finding the bishop by no means subservient, as she had expected, she summoned him to yield up his Castle of Wolvesey to her, to which summons he is said to have enigmatically replied, “I will prepare myself,” and this he did. He repaired and strengthened his Castle and threw his influence again into the scale of Stephen. Thus civil war broke out once more, and for six years the country was torn again by every kind of evil and oppression. In these troubles Winchester, placed, as it were, between anvil and hammer, with the empress-queen in the Castle and the bishop at Wolvesey, suffered terribly. Raid and counter-raid, siege and counter-siege succeeded one another, till almost the whole city--houses, churches, monasteries alike--were consumed in the flames. Alswitha’s foundation, Nunna Mynstre, or St. Mary’s Abbey, parish [Illustration: THE DEANERY, WINCHESTER One of the few remaining links with the conventual buildings of St. Swithun’s Priory, which among the Benedictines were always placed on the south side of the minster. Formerly it was the quarters of the Prior of St. Swithun’s. Philip of Spain was lodged here when he came to Winchester to marry Queen Mary of England.]