It was John’s hour of triumph, not over the clergy alone, but over all his subjects and vassals within the four seas of Britain. The action of the Pope and the inaction of the barons had opened a way for him to make himself “King of England” in his own sense of the words. To all outward seeming his whole time, since his return from the continent, had been devoted to mere amusement and self-indulgence. He “haunted woods and streams, and greatly did he delight in the pleasure of them.”[552] When he was not thus chasing the beasts of the forest, his yet more relentless pursuit of other prey was making havoc of the domestic peace, and rousing against him the deadly hatred, of some of the greatest of his barons.[553] But their hatred was futile; they were paralyzed partly by their own mutual jealousies, which the king was continually stirring up,[554] partly by the consequence of their selfish shortsightedness with regard to his persecution of the clergy. The interdict had placed one whole estate of the realm at John’s mercy; and the laity, having failed at the critical moment to make common cause with their clerical brethren, now found themselves in their turn without a support against his tyranny. His consciousness of power broke out in the strangest freaks of wantonness; in causing the Michaelmas session of the Exchequer to be held at Northampton instead of London, “out of hatred to the Londoners”;[555] in forbidding the capture of birds all over England;[556] in ordering that throughout the Forest districts the hedges should be fired and the ditches made by the people to protect their fields should be levelled, “so that, while men starved, the beasts might fatten upon the crops and fruits.”[557] It showed itself too in acts of graver political significance. A series of orders to the bailiffs of the coast towns for the equipment and mustering of their ships and the seizure of foreign vessels, issued in the spring and summer of 1208, indicates that John was then either meditating another expedition over sea, or, more probably, expecting an attack from thence. The muster, originally fixed for Trinity Sunday, was postponed to S. Matthew’s day,[558] and the end of the matter was that John, finding he had no immediate need for the services of the fleet, “took occasion”--no doubt on pretext of some deficiency in the contingent due from them--“to oppress the mariners of the Cinque Ports with great and heavy affliction. Some he hanged; some he killed with the sword; many were imprisoned and loaded with irons”; the rest fled into exile, and it was only by giving him fines and hostages that they appeased his wrath and bought his leave to return to their homes.[559] The barons were again required to renew their homage; the demand was made literally at the sword’s point--for John’s lavish hospitality and largesse[560] filled his court with mercenaries who were quite ready to enforce his will in such a matter--and they were compelled either