All the weak violence of the king's temper suddenly broke out.
He seized Roger the Chancellor and the Bishop of Lincoln when they appeared at Oxford in June 1139, and forced them to surrender their strongholds.

Shame broke the justiciar's heart; he died at the close of the year, and his nephew Nigel of Ely was driven from the realm.

But the fall of this house shattered the whole system of government.

The King's Court and the Exchequer ceased to work at a moment when the landing of Earl Robert and the Empress Matilda set Stephen face to face with a danger greater than he had yet encountered, while the clergy, alienated by the arrest of the Bishops and the disregard of their protests, stood angrily aloof.
[Sidenote: Civil War] The three bases of Henry's system of government, the subjection of the baronage to the law, the good-will of the Church, and the organization of justice and finance, were now utterly ruined; and for the fourteen years which passed from this hour to the Treaty of Wallingford England was given up to the miseries of civil war.

The country was divided between the adherents of the two rivals, the West supporting Matilda, London and the East Stephen.