Thus, when Henry contrived to form a truce with his rival the French King, and to enter England with a considerable army, the country was much disposed to receive him. Many of the nobility began to declare for him. The Beaumonts, as we have seen, were already his friends. The Countess of Warwick placed her castle in his hands. Robert of Leicester supplied him with provisions, and he marched in good hope to relieve Wallingford, which, defended by Brian Fitz-Count, Stephen was now besieging. There the two armies met; but the desire for peace was so general, that they both demanded that negotiations should be opened. Nothing was then settled, but the armies separated. Stephen proceeded to besiege Ipswich, where Bigot had declared for Henry, and Henry, taking Nottingham on the way, was marching to relieve it, when the heads of the Church saw their opportunity, and Theobald and Henry of Winchester combined to mediate a peace. This was the more easy on account of the death of the young Prince Eustace. On the 7th of November the Treaty of Pacification was concluded at Winchester. It was a compromise. Stephen was to remain King of England during his life; Henry was to be accepted as his son and heir; Stephen’s son William was to do homage to Henry for all his large possessions in England and in Normandy. There then followed an arrangement for restoring the administration which the war had ruined. The castles were to be razed, the coinage reformed, the sheriffs replaced, the crown lands resumed, the new earldoms extinguished, foreigners banished, and administration of justice restored.[19] After this treaty Henry’s duties summoned him chiefly to France; and Stephen, for the short remnant of his life, remained undisputed King of England. He died on the 25th of October 1154. [Sidenote: Quotations from chroniclers. The miseries of this reign.]