John meanwhile had returned to the coast of Dorset, where the host had apparently been ordered to reassemble, with the intention of sailing for Poitou. In view of his own expected absence from England, he is said to have committed the government to the justiciar and the bishop of Winchester, bidding them “order all its affairs with the advice of the archbishop of Canterbury.”[828] The king’s departure, however, now met with a new series of checks. First the knights came to him in a body and protested that the months which had elapsed since they assembled for defence against the French had consumed all their money, so that they could not possibly follow him any farther unless he would pay their expenses. This he refused to do.[829] The barons of the north were the next recalcitrants; when called upon to accompany him over sea, they “with one mind and determination refused, asserting that according to the tenure of their lands they were not bound to him in this; besides that they were already too much worn out and impoverished by expeditions within the realm.”[830] The angry king embarked with his household on August 5 or 6, and sailed to Jersey; but finding that no one followed him thither he soon came back,[831] in a mighty rage, “cursing the day and hour when he had consented to the peace, and declaring that he had been deceived, and made a gazing-stock for nothing.”[832] His mercenaries and foreign auxiliaries were still a formidable host; and with these he set out for the north, “to bring back the rebels to their obedience.”[833] He seems to have landed at Corfe on August 9; he began his northward march from Winchester on the 16th, reached Wallingford on the 25th, and Northampton on the 28th.[834] On the 25th Archbishop Stephen was in London, presiding over a great council in S. Paul’s Cathedral.[835] Thence he hurried away in pursuit of the king; he overtook him at Northampton, and remonstrated vigorously against John’s plans of vengeance upon the northern barons, telling him he would bring contempt upon the oath which he had sworn before his absolution if he made war upon any man without a legal sentence. John “with a great clamour” declared that he would not put off the business of his realm for the archbishop, who had no concern with matters of lay jurisdiction; and early next morning he set out, “in a furious temper,” for Nottingham. The archbishop followed him, and threatened that unless the project were at once given up he would excommunicate every man, save the king himself, who should take part in any military expedition so long as the interdict continued in force; nor could John shake him off till he had appointed a day for the accused barons to come and stand their trial in his court.[836]