Sir John de Honford must have quitted his post at Rouen, for before the close of the year he with other influential knights and gentry of the shire were summoned to the King's council at Chester for the purpose of granting a subsidy to enable him to carry on the war. Whether he returned to Normandy with the reinforcements or took part in the engagements in which Harfleur was retaken, and the brave Lord Talbot won such renown, is not clear, but his martial spirit could not find happiness in repose, and in 1441 (October 26) we find him entering into an engagement with Humphrey Earl (afterwards Duke) of Buckingham, then owner of the fortified stronghold of Macclesfield, to serve him in a military capacity for the remainder of his life in consideration of an annual fee of £10 chargeable on the manor of Thornbury, in Gloucestershire. There was no standing army in England then; fighting was done by contract, and such agreements were therefore not of uncommon occurrence. Upon emergencies forces were raised by the King's letters under the Privy Seal; lords, knights, and esquires quickly responded to the summons of the sovereign, and an army was readily got together if the means of paying the adventurous spirits who comprised it were forthcoming. But it must not be supposed that the fighting Englishmen of those days were taken from the plough without any previous military training. The casque and the morion were hung up in the cottage of the serf as well as in the castle of the feudatory chief, and the good yew bow was suspended in the halls of the knights and esquires for the use of their servants and retainers, in accordance with the statute (II Henry IV.) to shoot at the butts on every Sunday and high festival, the municipal authorities at the same time being required to see that the youths in their respective districts were taught to send the "light flight-arrow" to the legal distance of 220 yards, so that when they had grown to lusty manhood they might perform the same feat with the heavy war-arrow. Hence, in those days there were to be found Locksleys in every village to whom the long range offered no difficulty when the King's letter came, whether direct or through the chief landowner to his subinfeudatory tenants and partisans.