A crisis seemed imminent, but Henry managed to avoid it. From the Emperor’s solicitations, from the Pope’s remonstrances, from all the pleadings of friends and all the intrigues of foes, he suddenly made his escape by flying back to England and plunging into a Welsh war which kept him all the summer safe out of their reach,[223] and furnished him with an excuse for postponing indefinitely the completion of his alliance with the schismatic party. Such an alliance would in fact have cost far more than it was worth. Alexander was once more safely seated upon S. Peter’s chair, and was urging Thomas to throw himself wholly on the protection of the king of France; Louis was in the highest state of triumph, rejoicing over the birth of his long-desired son; while the whole Angevin dominions, which Eleanor was governing in her husband’s absence, were full of suppressed disaffection and surrounded with threatening or intriguing foes.[224] In Lent 1166 therefore Henry hurried back to Normandy to hold a conference with Louis, and, if possible, to free his own hands for the work which lay before him. [223] Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 197) says Henry went into Wales in 1165, “quo facilius domini Papæ vel etiam Cantuariensis archiepiscopi ... declinaret sententiam.” [224] “Movetur enim [rex] Francorum invidiâ, calumniisque Flandrensium, Wallensium improbitate, Scottorum insidiis, temeritate Britonum, Pictavorumque fœderibus, interioris Aquitaniæ sumptibus, Gasconum levitate, et (quod gravius est) simultate fere omnium quoscumque ditioni ejus constat esse subjectos.” Ep. clxii. (Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v.), pp. 313, 314.