Finally, Philip dropped the mask altogether, and made a direct offer, not to John, but to John’s Norman subjects, including the two lay ambassadors.  All those, he said, who within a year and a day would come to him and do him homage for their lands should receive confirmation of their tenure from him.  Hereupon the two English earls, after consulting together, gave him five hundred marks each, on the express understanding that he was to leave them unmolested in the enjoyment of their Norman lands for a twelvemonth and a day, and that at the expiration of that time they would come and do homage for those lands to him, if John had not meanwhile regained possession of the duchy.  Neither William the Marshal nor his colleague had any thought of betraying or deserting John; as the Marshal’s biographer says, they “did not wish to be false”; and when they reached England they seem to have frankly told John what they had done, and to have received no blame for it.

The return of the English embassy was followed by a letter from the commandant of Rouen—­John’s “trusty and well-beloved” Peter of Preaux—­informing the English King that “all the castles and towns from Bayeux to Anet” had promised Philip that they would surrender to him as soon as he was master of Rouen, an event which, Peter plainly hinted, was not likely to be long delayed.  This information about the western towns was probably incorrect, for it was on Western Normandy that Philip made his next attack.  John meanwhile had in January imposed a scutage of two marks and a half per shield throughout England, and, in addition, a tax of a seventh of movables, which, though it fell upon all classes alike, the clergy included, he is said to have demanded expressly on the ground of the barons’ desertion of him in Normandy.

The hire of a mercenary force was of course the object to which the proceeds of both these taxes were destined; but they took time to collect and John soon fell back upon a readier, though less trustworthy, resource, and summoned the feudal host of England to meet him at Portsmouth, seemingly in the first week of May.  It gathered, however, so slowly that he was obliged to give up the expedition.  Philip was about this time besieging Falaise; he won it, and went on in triumph to receive the surrender of Domfront, Seez, Lisieux, Caen, Bayeux, Coutances, Barfleur, and Cherbourg.  He was then joined by John’s late ally, the Count of Boulogne, as well as by Guy of Thouars, the widower of Constance of Brittany; and these two, their forces swelled by a troop of mercenaries who had transferred their services from John to Philip after the surrender of Falaise, completed the conquest of Southwestern Normandy, while the French King at last set his face toward Rouen.  He was not called upon to besiege it, nor even to threaten it with a siege.  On June 1, 1204, Peter de Preaux made in his own name, and in the names of the commandants of Arques and Verneuil, a truce with Philip, promising that these