The king of Scots was defeated; and he himself, as well as his son Henry, narrowly escaped falling into the hands of the English.

This success overawed the malecontents in England, and might have given some stability to Stephen's throne, had he not been so elated with prosperity as to engage in a controversy with the clergy, who were at that time an overmatch for any monarch.
Though the great power of the church, in ancient times, weakened the authority of the crown, and interrupted the course of the laws, it may be doubted whether, in ages of such violence and outrage, it was not rather advantageous that some limits were set to the power of the sword, both in the hands of the prince and nobles, and that men were taught to pay regard to some principles and privileges.

{1139.} The chief misfortune was, that the prelates, on some occasions, acted entirely as barons, employed military power against their sovereign or their neighbors, and thereby often increased those disorders which it was their duty to repress.

The bishop of Salisbury, in imitation of the nobility, had built two strong castles, one at Sherborne, another at the Devizes, and had laid the foundations of a third at Malmsbury: his nephew; Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, had erected a fortress at Newark; and Stephen, who was now sensible from experience of the mischiefs attending these multiplied; citadels, resolved to begin with destroying those of the clergy, who by their function seemed less entitled than the barons to such military securities.[*] Making pretence of a fray, which had arisen in court between the retinue of the bishop of Salisbury and that of the earl of Brittany, he seized both that prelate and the bishop of Lincoln, threw them into prison, and obliged them by menaces to deliver up those places of strength which they had lately erected.[**] Henry, bishop of Winchester, the king's brother, being armed with a legantine commission, now conceived himself to be an ecclesiastical sovereign no less powerful than the civil; and forgetting the ties of blood which connected him with the king, he resolved to vindicate the clerical privileges which, he pretended, were here openly violated.

He assembled a synod at Westminster, and there complained of the impiety of Stephen's measures, who had employed violence against the dignitaries of the church, and had not awaited the sentence of a spiritual court, by which alone, he affirmed, they could lawfully be tried and condemned, if their conduct had anywise merited censure or punishment.[***] The synod, ventured to send a summons to the king, charging him to appear before them, and to justify his measures;[****] and Stephen, instead of resenting this indignity, sent Aubrey de Vere to plead his cause before that assembly.