The justiciars were in an extremity of despair.  “Seeing the evil that was done in the land,” they anxiously sent messenger after messenger to the king.  But Henry had little time to heed English complaints.  Richard had declared war in Aquitaine; Maine and Anjou were half in revolt; Louis was on the point of invading Normandy.  As a last resource his hard-pressed ministers sent Richard of Ilchester, the bishop-elect of Winchester, whom they knew to be favoured by the king beyond all others, to tell him again of “the hatred of the barons, the infidelity of the citizens, the clamour of the crowd always growing worse, the greed of the ‘new men,’ the difficulty of holding down the insurrection.”  “The English have sent their messengers before, and here comes even this man!” laughed the Normans; “what will be left in England to send after the king save the Tower of London!” Richard reached Henry on the 24th of June, and on the same day Henry abandoned Normandy to Louis’ attack, and made ready for return.  “He saw that while he was absent, and as it were not in existence, no one in England would offer any opposition to him who was expected to be his successor;” and he “preferred that his lands beyond the sea should be in peril rather than his own realm of England.”  Sending forward a body of Brabantines, he followed with his train of prisoners—­Queen Eleanor, Queen Margaret and her sister Adela, the Earls of Chester and of Leicester, and various governors of castles whom he carried with him in chains.  In an agony of anxiety the king watched for a fair wind till the 7th of July.  At last the sails were spread; but of a sudden the waves began to rise, and the storm to grow ominously.  Those who watched the face of the king saw him to be in doubt; then he lifted his eyes to heaven and prayed before them all, “If I have set before my eyes the things which make for the peace of clergy and people, if the King of heaven has ordained that peace shall be restored by my arrival, then let Him in His mercy bring me to a safe port; but if He is against me, and has decreed to visit my kingdom with a rod, then let me never touch the shores of the land.”

A good omen was granted, and he safely reached Southampton.  Refusing even to enter the city, and eating but bread and water, he pressed forward to Canterbury.  At its gates he dismounted and put away from him the royal majesty, and with bare feet, in the garb of a pilgrim and penitent, his footsteps marked with blood, he passed on to the church.  There he sought the martyr’s sepulchre, and lying prostrate with outstretched hands, he remained long in prayer, with abundance of tears and bitter groanings.  After a sermon by Foliot the king filled up the measure of humiliation.  He made public oath that he was guiltless of the death of the archbishop, but in penitence of his hasty words he prayed absolution of the bishops, and gave his body to the discipline of rods, receiving three or five strokes from each one of the seventy