When the news of these animated discussions reached Henry, his displeasure broke out, and those immediately around him fanned his indignation. ‘A great part of the youth of our university,’ said the king, ‘with contentious and factious manners, daily combine together.’... The courtiers, instead of moderating, excited his anger. Every day, they told him, these young men, regardless of their duty towards their sovereign, and not conforming to the opinions of the most virtuous and learned men of the university, meet together to deliberate and oppose his majesty’s views. ‘Hath it ever been seen,’ exclaimed the king, ‘that such a number of right small learning should stay their seniors in so weighty a cause?’[51] Henry, in exasperation, wrote to the heads of the houses: ‘_Non est bonum irritare crabrones_.’ It is not good to stir a hornet’s nest. This threat excited the younger party still more: if the term ‘hornet’ amused some, it irritated others. In hot weather, the hornet (the king) chases the weaker insects; but the noise he makes in flying forewarns them, and the little ones escape him. Henry could not hide his vexation; he feared lest the little flies should prove stronger than the big hornet. He was uneasy in his castle of Windsor; and the insolent opposition of Oxford pursued him wherever he turned his steps—on the terrace, in the wide park, and even in the royal chapel. ‘What!’ he exclaimed, ‘shall this university dare show itself more unkind and wilful than all other universities, abroad or at home?’[52] Cambridge had recognized the king’s right, and Oxford refused. Wishing to end the matter, Henry summoned the High-Almoner Fox to Windsor, and ordered him to repeat at Oxford the victory he had gained at Cambridge. He then dictated to his secretary a letter to the recalcitrants: ‘We cannot a little marvel that you, neither having respect to our estate,—being your prince and sovereign lord,—nor yet remembering such benefits as we have always showed unto you, have hitherto refused the accomplishment of our desire. Permit no longer the private suffrages of light and wilful heads to prevail over the learned. By your diligence redeem the errors and delays past. ‘Given under our signet, at our castle of Windsor.’[53] Fox was entrusted with this letter.