and honours, except their castles, which were either razed or retained in the king’s hands.[841] [837] Hugh Bigod’s Flemings and the knights sent over by the young king were all sent out of the country immediately after Hugh’s surrender, and the former were made to swear that they would never set a hostile foot in England again. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 385. [838] This is the “Assiza super dominica regis et super terras eorum qui recesserunt.” Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 184, 185. [839] See extract from Pipe Roll 20 Hen. II. [a. 1174], and Mr. Eyton’s comment upon it, _Itin. Hen. II._, p. 181, note 2. [840] Hugh of Chester was probably released at the same time with the king of Scots, for he signs among the witnesses to the treaty of Falaise. _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 99. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 82. [841] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 134, 135. Rog. Howden as above, p. 118. This very clemency was in itself at once the strongest proof of the completeness of Henry’s victory and the surest means of retaining the hold which he had now gained over the barons. The struggle whose course we have been trying to follow has a special significance: it was the last struggle in English history in which the barons were arrayed against the united interests of the Crown and the people. That feudal pride which had revolted so often and so fiercely against the determination of William the Conqueror and Henry I. to enforce justice and order throughout their realm stooped at last to acknowledge its master in Henry II. In the unbroken tranquillity, the uninterrupted developement of reform in law and administration, the unchecked growth of the material and social prosperity of England during the remaining fifteen years of his reign, Henry and his people reaped the first-fruits of the anti-feudal policy which he and his predecessors had so long and so steadily maintained. Its full harvest was to be reaped after he was gone, not by the sovereign, but by the barons themselves, to whom his strong hand had at last taught their true mission as leaders and champions of the English people against a king who had fallen away from the traditions alike of the Norman and of the Angevin Henry. CHAPTER V. THE ANGEVIN EMPIRE. 1175–1183.