Some half-dozen of the king’s English adherents--William of Essex, William of Arundel, Robert de Stuteville and the elder Saher de Quincy, besides two who had lately come over from Ireland, Richard of Striguil and Hugh de Lacy--either returned with him to Rouen or had joined him there already,[704] thus helping to swell the little group of loyalists who surrounded him in Normandy. That group contained no Norman baron of the first rank, and consisted only of a few personal friends and ministers:--Richard of Hommet the constable of the duchy, with all his sons and brothers;[705] William de Courcy the seneschal;[706] Richard Fitz-Count, the king’s cousin;[707] Hugh de Beauchamp[708] and Henry of Neubourg,[709] sons of the loyal house of Beauchamp which in England looked to the earl of Warwick as its head; Richard de Vernon and Jordan Tesson;[710]--while two faithful members of the older Norman nobility, Hugh of Gournay and his son, had already fallen prisoners into the hands of the young king.[711] It was in truth Henry’s continental dominions which most needed his presence and that of all the forces which he could muster; for the two chief English rebels, the earls of Leicester and Chester, were both beyond the Channel, and their absence enabled the king’s representatives to strike the first blow before the revolt had time to break forth in England at all. On July 3 the town of Leicester was besieged by Richard de Lucy and Earl Reginald of Cornwall at the head of “the host of England.”[712] After a three weeks’ siege and a vast expenditure of money and labour,[713] the town was fired, and on July 28 it surrendered.[714] The castle still held out, its garrison accepting a truce until Michaelmas; the gates and walls of the city were at once thrown down; the citizens were suffered to go out free on payment of a fine of three hundred marks;[715] but it was only by taking sanctuary in the great abbeys of S. Alban or S. Edmund that their leaders could feel secure against the vengeance of the king.[716] [704] Essex and Arundel had both been with him since the very beginning of the year, for they witnessed the marriage-contract of John and Alice of Maurienne; _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 39. Robert de Stuteville and Saher de Quincy seem to have been with him in the summer of 1173 (Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 174). Hugh de Lacy was at Verneuil, defending it for the king in July (_Gesta Hen._, vol. i. p. 49); and Richard of Striguil was of the party which went to its relief in August (R. Diceto, Stubbs, vol. i. p. 375). [705] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 51, note 4. [706] _Ib._ p. 39. Cf. Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 170, 177. [707] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 51. [708] _Ib._ p. 49. [709] _Ib._ p. 52. [710] _Ib._ pp. 51, 52.