It was clear that an end must be made of this Welsh trouble before John could venture across the Channel. He changed his plans with his usual promptitude. In July the king’s escheators throughout England were ordered to see that the escheats in their custody should furnish each a certain number of carpenters and other labourers provided with proper tools, and with money enough to carry them to Chester. Writs were also issued to Alan of Galloway bidding him send a thousand of his “best and bravest men,” to William the Marshal, Bishop John of Norwich, and others of the king’s liegemen in Ireland, and to the tenants by serjeanty throughout England, requiring their personal attendance; the place of muster for all alike being Chester, and the appointed date Sunday, August 19.[753] On August 16, however, the king sent out from Nottingham a notice that he was unable to be at Chester on the day fixed, and that the muster would not take place.[754] The orders which he issued next day indicate that he was contemplating a diversion by sea, part of the fleet being ordered to sail from Chester, coast along North Wales, and “do as much harm to the enemy as possible,” while another part was to assemble at Bristol.[755] He probably meant to await the result of these movements, as well as of some negotiations which he was carrying on with the South Welsh chieftains,[756] before deciding whether his main advance should be made by way of North or South Wales. The host finally mustered at Nottingham in the second week of September.[757] The chivalry of England gathered {Sept. 9–15} round the king “in such array and in such numbers,” says a contemporary, “that no man of our day remembers the like.”[758] John’s first act on reaching the muster-place, “before he tasted food,” was to hang twenty-eight of the hostages whom he had taken from the Welsh in the previous year.[759] But “suddenly God brought his counsel to nought.”[760] As he sat at table there came to him a breathless messenger from the king of Scots, followed by one from the Princess Joan of Wales, John’s daughter and Llywelyn’s wife. Both messengers brought letters whose contents, they said, were weighty and secret. When the two letters were read, their purport proved to be almost identical. William and Joan alike warned the king that his barons were preparing to act upon the papal sentence which absolved them from their allegiance, and, if he persisted in leading them to war, either to turn and slay him themselves, or deliver him up to death at the hands of his Welsh enemies.[761] Such a warning, coming at the same instant from two such different quarters, was not to be lightly put aside. It was emphasized by the sudden disappearance of two barons, Eustace de Vesci and Robert FitzWalter, who at once secretly withdrew from the host.[762] John could hardly doubt the significance of their departure at such a moment. He dismissed his army and moved by slow stages back to London.[763]