In June or July 1211[717] the cardinal subdeacon Pandulf, who was much in the Pope’s confidence, and a Templar named Durand came to England “that they might restore peace between the Crown and the clergy.”[718] They seem to have been sent at the king’s request. The terms of the commission which they had received from the Pope are known from a reissue of it two years later. They were to exhort John to make satisfaction “according to a form subscribed between ourself” (the Pope) “and his envoys.” If he would publicly take an oath of absolute obedience to the Pope’s mandates on all matters for which he was under excommunication, they were to give him absolution; and when they had obtained from him security for the reinstatement of the archbishop of Canterbury, they were to withdraw the interdict.[719] John met them on his return from Wales, at Northampton, on August 30,[720] and received them publicly in a great assembly of the barons. The details of the conference rest only upon the authority of two comparatively late monastic chronicles; but there is no reason for doubting the correctness of the main outlines of their story. The envoys called upon John to make satisfaction to the Church, restore the property which he had taken from her ministers, and receive Archbishop Stephen, the exiled bishops, their kinsfolk and their friends “fairly and in peace.” The king answered that they might make him swear to restore everything, and he would do whatever else they liked, “but if that fellow Stephen sets foot in my land, I will have him hanged.” A discussion followed as to the circumstances of Stephen’s election and the respective rights of Pope and King in such matters. John ended by offering to receive as archbishop any one whom the Pope might choose except Stephen, and to give Stephen another see if he would resign all claims upon Canterbury. Pandulf scornfully rejected this proposal. At last, in presence of the whole council, he pronounced to John’s face the papal sentence of excommunication, of which, he said, the publication had only been delayed till his own arrival in England and that of his colleagues; he absolved all John’s subjects from their allegiance, bade them be ready to join the ranks and obey the leader of any host which the Pope might send to England, and denounced not only John himself, but also all his posterity, as for ever incapacitated for the office of king. It is said that on this John bade the sheriffs and foresters who were present bring in whatever prisoners they had in their charge, and gave orders for the hanging of some and the blinding or mutilation of others, to show the papal envoys his own absolute power and his ruthlessness in the exercise of it; that among the prisoners was a clerk charged with forgery, whom he ordered to be hanged; that Pandulf wanted to excommunicate at once any one who should lay hands on this man, and went out of the hall to fetch a candle for the purpose,