Towards the middle of this summer, the King marched in person to Worcester. He had directed the sheriffs to forward their contingents thither; but, when he arrived at that city, he changed his purpose and soon returned to London. Among the considerations which led to this change in his plans, we may probably reckon the following. In the first place, he found his son the Prince, Lord Powis, and Henry Percy, in vigorous operation against the rebels; his arrival at Worcester having been only three or four days after the date of Percy's last letter. In the next place, the council had urged him not to go in person against the rebels: besides, almost all the inhabitants of North Wales had returned to their allegiance, and had been pardoned. He was, moreover, naturally anxious to summon a parliament, with a view of replenishing his exhausted treasury, and enabling himself to enter upon the campaign with means more calculated to insure success. In a letter to his council, dated Worcester, 8th June 1401, the King refers to two points of advice suggested by them. "Inasmuch as (p. 114) you have advised us," he says, "to write to our much beloved son, the Prince, and to others, who may have in their possession any jewels which ought to be delivered with our cousin the Queen, (Isabella,) know ye, that we will send to our said son, that, if he has any of such jewels, he will send them with all possible speed to you at our city of London, where, if God will, we intend to be in our own person before the Queen's departure; and we will cause to be delivered to her there the rest of the said jewels, which we and others our children have in our keeping." In answer to their advice that he would not go in person against the rebels, because they were not in sufficient strength, and of too little reputation to warrant that step, he said that he found they had risen in great numbers, and called for his personal exertions. He forwarded to them at the same time a copy of the letter which he had just received from Owyn himself. Not from this correspondence only, but from other undisputed documents, and from the loud complaints of French writers,[115] we are compelled to infer something extremely unsatisfactory in the conduct of Henry IV. with regard to the valuable paraphernalia of Isabella, the maiden-widow of Richard. To avoid restoring these treasures, which fell into his hands on the capture of that unfortunate monarch, Henry proposed, in (p. 115) November 1399, a marriage between one of his sons and one of the daughters of the French monarch. In January 1400 a truce was signed between the two kingdoms, and the same negociators (the Bishop of Durham and the Earl of Worcester) were directed to treat with the French ambassadors on the terms of the restitution of Isabella; and so far did they immediately proceed, that horses were ordered for her journey to Dover. But legal doubts as to her dower (she not being