As for the Castle of Wolvesey, Bishop Henry of Blois rebuilt it in 1138.  It was indeed in his time that Winchester suffered the most disastrous of all its sieges, as we may believe, and this at the hands of the Empress Matilda in 1141.  The greater part of the city is then said to have been destroyed; the new Abbey of Hyde was burned down not to be rebuilt till 1182; the old Nunnery of St Mary was destroyed also by fire; and we are told of more than forty churches which then perished.  “Combustibles were hurled from the Bishop’s Castle,” William of Malmesbury tells us, “in the houses of the townspeople, who, as I have said, rather wished success to the empress than to the bishop, which caught and burned the whole abbey of nuns within the city and the monastery which is called Hyde without the walls.  Here was an image of Our Lord crucified, wrought with a profusion of gold and silver and precious stones, through the pious solicitude of Canute, who was formerly king and presented it.  This being seized by the flames and thrown to the ground was afterwards stripped of its ornaments at the command of the Legate himself; more than five hundred marks of silver and thirty of gold, which were found in it, served for a largess to the soldiers.”

It would, perhaps, be untrue to say that Winchester never really recovered from the appalling sack and pillage which followed the flight of Matilda; but it is true to assert that time was fighting against her, and that the thirteenth century did not bring the splendid gifts to her that it brought to so many of our cities.  One great ceremony, the last of its kind, however, took place in her Cathedral in 1194; the second coronation of Coeur de Lion.  “Then King Richard,” we read, “being clothed in his royal robes, with the crown upon his head, holding in his right hand a royal sceptre which terminated in a cross, and in his left hand a golden wand with the figure of a dove at the top of it, came forth from his apartment in the priory, being conducted on the right hand by the Bishop of Ely, his Chancellor, and on the left by the Bishop of London. ...  The silken canopy was held on four lances over the King by four Earls. ...  The King being thus conducted into the Cathedral and up to the High Altar, there fell upon his knees, and devoutly received the archbishop’s solemn benediction.  He was then led to the throne, which was prepared for him, on the south side of the choir. ...  When Mass was finished the King was led back to his apartments with the solemnities aforesaid.  He then laid aside his robes and crown, put on other robes and a crown that were much lighter, and so proceeded to dinner, which was served in the monks’ refectory.”