alone were warned of his intention to set forth again before daybreak, and the little party had got a start of seven leagues on the road to Caen before their absence was discovered by the rest of the suite, of whom “some went after them, and the more part went back.”  Still John was reluctant to leave Normandy; he went south to Domfront and west to Vire before he again returned to the coast at Barfleur on November 28th, and even then he spent five days at Gonneville and one at Cherbourg before he finally took ship at Barfleur on December 5th, to land at Portsmouth next day.

It was probably before he left Rouen that he addressed a letter to the commandant of Chateau Gaillard in these terms:  “We thank you for your good and faithful service, and desire that, as much as in you lies, you will persevere in the fidelity and homage which you owe to us; that you may receive a worthy meed of praise from God and from ourself and from all who know your faithfulness.  If, however—­which God forbid!—­you should find yourself in such straits that you can hold out no longer, then do whatsoever our trusty and well-beloved Peter of Preaux, William of Mortimer, and Hugh of Howels, our clerk, shall bid you in our name.”

An English chronicler says that John “being unwilling”—­or “unable”—­“to succor the besieged, through fear of the treason of his men, went to England, leaving all the Normans in a great perturbation of fear.”  It is hard to see what they feared, unless it were John’s possible vengeance, at some future time, for their universal readiness to welcome his rival.  Not one town manned its walls, not one baron mustered his tenants and garrisoned his castles, to withstand the invader.  Some, as soon as John was out of the country, openly made a truce with Philip for a year, on the understanding that if not succored by John within that time they would receive the French King as their lord; the rest stood passively looking on at the one real struggle of the war, the struggle for Chateau Gaillard.

At length, on March 6, 1204, the Saucy Castle fell.  Its fall opened the way for a French advance upon Rouen; but before taking this further step Philip deemed it politic to let the Pope’s envoy, the Abbot of Casamario, complete his mission by going to speak with John.  The abbot was received at a great council in London at the end of March; the result was his return to France early in April, in company with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops of Norwich and Ely, and the earls of Pembroke and Leicester, all charged with a commission “to sound the French King, and treat with him about terms of peace.”  On the French King’s side the negotiation was a mere form; to whatever conditions the envoys proposed, he always found some objection; and his own demands were such as John’s representatives dared not attempt to lay before their sovereign—­Arthur’s restoration, or, if he were dead, the surrender of his sister Eleanor, and the cession to Philip, as her suzerain and guardian, of the whole Continental dominions of the Angevin house.