These letters and the papal decree for John’s deposition were publicly read to the French bishops, clergy and people in a council assembled for that purpose at Soissons on the Monday in Holy Week, April 8.[786] It was no new idea that the papal mandate suggested to Philip Augustus. For a whole year at least he had been contemplating the conquest of England and the establishment of his eldest son, Louis, upon its throne; in April 1212 Louis had already arranged the terms on which he would receive the homage of the English barons and the political relation in which he was to stand towards his father after his own coronation in England.[787] To Philip and Louis the Pope’s commission was merely the signal that their longed-for hour had come. “Then the king of the French, hearing and receiving the thing which he had long desired, girded himself up for the fight,” and bade all his men, on pain of “culvertage,” be ready to meet him at Rouen on April 21, the first Sunday after Easter;[788] and ships, victuals, arms and men were rapidly gathered together in answer to his call.[789] [Sidenote: 1213] Still more prompt and vigorous were John’s preparations for defence. He seems to have begun by ordering that all English ships should return to the ports to which they severally belonged not later than the first Sunday in Lent, March 3. On that day he despatched writs to the bailiffs of the seaport towns, bidding them make out a list of the vessels which they found in their respective ports capable of carrying six horses or more, and direct the captains and owners of all such vessels, in his name, to bring them to Portsmouth at Mid-Lent (March 21), “well manned with good and brave mariners, well armed, who shall go on our service at our expense.”[790] He next bade the sheriffs summon all earls, barons, knights, freemen and sergeants, whosoever they were and of whomsoever they held, who ought to have arms or could get them, and who had done him homage and fealty, to the intent that, “as they love us and themselves and all that is theirs, they be at Dover at the close of Easter next, well prepared with horses and arms and with all their might to defend our head, and their own heads, and the land of England. And let no man who can bear arms stay behind, on pain of culvertage and perpetual servitude; and let each man follow his own lord; and let those who have no land and can carry arms come thither to take our pay.” Each sheriff was to see that all sales of victuals and all markets within his sheriffdom “followed the host,” and that none were held elsewhere within his jurisdiction. He himself was to come to the muster “in force, with horses and arms,” and to bring his roll, whereby the king might be certified who had obeyed his summons and who had stayed behind.[791]