At a Parliament or assembly of nobles at Oxford, it was contrived to raise a quarrel between the servants of some bishops and those of Alan Count of Dinan in Bretagne, upon a contention of rooms in their inns.

Stephen took hold of this advantage, sent for the bishops, taxed them with breaking his peace, and demanded the keys of their castles, adding threats of imprisonment if they dared to disobey.

Those whom the King chiefly suspected, or rather who had built the most and strongest castles, were Roger Bishop of Salisbury, with his nephew and natural son the Bishops of Ely and Lincoln, whom the King, by many circumstances of rigour, compelled to surrender, going himself in person to seize the Devizes, then esteemed the noblest structure of Europe, and built by the forementioned Bishop Roger, whose treasure, to the value of forty thousand marks,[31] there likewise deposited, fell, at the same time, into the King's hand, which in a few days broke the bishop's heart, already worn with age and infirmity.
[Footnote 31: This prelate's treasure is doubtless computed by the smaller or Saxon mark; the use of which still prevailed in England: and even thus computed, it amounts to a vast sum, equal to about L116,350 of modern money.

[D.S.]] It may, perhaps, not be thought a digression to say something of the fortunes of this prelate, who, from the lowest beginnings, came to be, without dispute, the greatest churchman of any subject in his age.

It happened that the late King Henry, in the reign of his brother, being at a village in Normandy, wanted a priest to say mass before him and his train, when this man, who was a poor curate thereabouts, offered his service, and performed it with so much dexterity and speed, that the soldiers who attended the prince recommended him to their master, upon that account, as a very proper chaplain for military men; but it seems he had other talents; for having gotten into the prince's service, he soon discovered great application and address, much order and economy in the management of his master's fortunes, which were wholly left to his care.