to submit to it, or to give their sons and kinsmen as hostages for their fidelity.[561] The king seemed indeed, as Matthew Paris says, to be courting the hatred of every class of his subjects.[562] But hate him as much as they might, they feared him yet more than they hated him; and “burdensome” as he was “to both rich and poor,”[563] when he summoned all the free tenants throughout the realm, of whatever condition, who were above the age of twelve years, to swear fealty in person to him and his infant heir in the autumn of 1209, rich and poor alike durst not do otherwise than obey him.[564] [Sidenote: 1209] This ceremony took place at Marlborough in September,[565] just before the final rupture of the negotiations with Langton and the bishops. A few weeks earlier John had received the submission of the king of Scots. Twice or thrice in the last two years a visit of William the Lion to the English court had been projected.[566] It took place at length in the middle of April 1209 at Bolton, whence John and William proceeded together to Norham for a conference.[567] The shelter given in Scotland to some of the bishops and other persons who fled from John’s persecution in connection with the interdict[568] supplied the English king with a pretext for demanding, once for all, security for William’s loyalty. He bade him surrender either three castles on the border or his only son as a hostage. William refused to do either.[569] John, on returning to the south, summoned his host, and in July set out to take the three castles by force. The papal excommunication was hanging over his head, and its publication was hourly expected; his troops shrank alike from his leadership and from an encounter with the Scot king, who was considered “eminent for his piety,” the champion of the Church and the favourite of Heaven, while they, being under interdict, were virtually outcasts from the Christian fold. A dexterous renewal of negotiations with Innocent and Stephen, however, staved off the excommunication and prevented the threatened desertion of the English troops;[570] and on August 4 John was at Norham[571] at the head of a great host ready to do battle with the Scots. On hearing this, William “greatly feared his attack, knowing him to be given to every kind of cruelty; so he came to meet him and offered to treat for peace; but the king of the English flew into a rage and insulted him bitterly, reproaching him with having received his (John’s) fugitives and public enemies into his realm, and lent them countenance and help against him.” At last some “friends of both realms” arranged terms which pacified John and which William dared not refuse. He sent his son {Aug. 7}, not indeed as a hostage, but to do homage to the English king “for the aforesaid castles and other lands which he held”;[572] he undertook to pay John by instalments within the next two years fifteen thousand marks “to have his goodwill”; he gave hostages