Henry’s next step was to exact, first from the barons of Normandy and then from the Great Council of England, a solemn oath of homage and fealty to his son William as his destined successor.[571] This ceremony, not unusual in France, but quite without precedent in England, was doubtless a precaution against the chances of the war which he foresaw must soon be renewed. This time indeed he was himself the aggressor; Louis had made no hostile movement, and Fulk was troubled by a revolt at home, whose exact nature is not clearly ascertained. The universal tendency of feudal vassals to rebel against their lord had probably something to do with it; but there seems also to have been another and a far more interesting element at work. “There arose a grave dissension between Count Fulk the Younger and the burghers of Angers.”[572] In this provokingly brief entry in one of the Angevin chronicles we may perhaps catch a glimpse of that new spirit of civic freedom which was just springing into life in northern Europe, and which made some progress both in France and in England during the reigns of Louis VI. and Henry I. One would gladly know what were the demands of the Angevin burghers, and how they were met by the son-in-law of Elias of Le Mans; but the faint echo of the dispute between count and citizens is drowned in the roar of the more imposing strife which soon broke out anew between the rival kings. Its ostensible cause was now Count Theobald of Blois, whose wrongs were made by his uncle a ground for marching into France, in company with Theobald himself and his brother Stephen, in the spring of 1116. Louis retaliated by a raid upon Normandy; the Norman barons recommenced their old intrigues;[573] and they were soon furnished with an excellent pretext. After the battle of Tinchebray, Duke Robert’s infant son William had been intrusted by his victorious uncle to the care of his half-sister’s husband, Elias of Saint-Saëns. Elias presently began to suspect Henry of evil designs against the child; at once, sacrificing his own possessions to Henry’s wrath, he fled with his charge and led him throughout all the neighbouring lands, seeking to stir up sympathy for the fugitive heir of Normandy, till he found him a shelter at the court of his kinsman Count Baldwin of Flanders.[574] At last the faithful guardian’s zeal was rewarded by seeing the cause of his young brother-in-law taken up by both Baldwin and Louis. In 1117 they leagued themselves together with the avowed object of avenging Duke Robert and reinstating his son in the duchy of Normandy; and their league was at once joined by the count of Anjou.[575] [571] Eng. Chron. a. 1115. Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 69. Eadmer, _Hist. Nov._ (Rule), p. 237.