father in England; Henry, however, sent them back again, and Richard put them in prison to await their sentence till the king should return to Gaul.[984] [976] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 8 (Angl. Christ. Soc., p. 105). [977] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 101. [978] See Clédat, _Bertrand de Born_, pp. 29, 30. [979] _Gesta Hen._ as above, pp. 114, 115. [980] _Ib._ p. 115. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 93. [981] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 407. He adds: “Sicque salus in manu clericorum data satis evidenter ostendit plerisque non animos deesse sed arma.” [982] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 120, 121. [983] See Clédat, _Bertrand de Born_, p. 35. [984] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 121. Northern Aquitaine, or Guyenne, was now for the moment subdued. As soon as Christmas was over Richard proceeded to the reduction of Gascony. Dax, held against him by its viscount Peter and by the count of Bigorre, and Bayonne, defended by its viscount Ernald Bertram, submitted each after a ten days’ siege; S. Pierre-de-Cize, on the Spanish frontier, fell in one day; the Basques and Navarrese were compelled to promise peace; the plunderings habitually inflicted by the border-folk upon pilgrims to the shrine of S. James at Compostella were suppressed; and from his court at Poitiers on Candlemas-day Richard triumphantly reported to his father that he had pacified the whole country.[985] But the peace did not last long. Trouble was already threatening at the opposite end of the duchy. Ralf of Déols, the wealthiest baron in Berry, had lately died leaving as his heir an infant daughter. She was of course, according to feudal law, a ward of her overlord, King Henry; but her relatives seized both her and her estates, and refused to give up either.[986] Henry, probably feeling that the boy-duke of Aquitaine had already more than enough upon his hands, charged his eldest son with the settlement of this affair, bidding him take possession of all Ralf’s lands without delay, and significantly adding: “While I governed my realms alone, I lost none of my rightful possessions; it will be shame to us all if aught of them be lost now that we are several to rule them.” The young king took the hint, marched with all his Norman and Angevin forces into Berry, and laid siege to Châteauroux;[987] but he seems to have had no success;[988] and there was no chance of help from Richard, for not only was the Limousin again plunged in civil war,[989] but all southern Aquitaine was in danger of a like fate--an attempt of Count Raymond of Toulouse to exert his authority as overlord of Narbonne with greater stringency than its high-spirited viscountess Hermengard was disposed to endure having stirred up against him a league of all the princes of Septimania and the Spanish border, under the leadership