This message was delivered to the insurgents by the primate and the Marshal, at Brackley, on Monday April 27--the day after that originally fixed for the meeting of the barons and the king. “Then they [the barons] presented to the envoys a certain schedule, which consisted for the most part of ancient laws and customs of the realm, declaring that if the king did not at once grant these things and confirm them with his seal, they would compel him by force.”[994] This “schedule” was no doubt a kind of first draft, prepared under the direction of Langton himself in his conferences with the insurgents during the previous week, of those “Articles of the Barons” from which we chiefly learn the grievances of the time, and most of which were ultimately embodied in the Great Charter. Langton and the Marshal carried it back to the king, who was now in Wiltshire.[995] One by one the articles were read out to him by the primate. John listened with a scornful smile: “Why do these barons not ask for my kingdom at once?” he said. “Their demands are idle dreams, without a shadow of reason.” Then he burst into a fury, and swore that he would never grant to them liberties which would make himself a slave. In vain the archbishop and the Marshal endeavoured to persuade him to yield; he only bade them go back to the barons and repeat every word that he had said. They performed their errand;[996] and the barons immediately sent to the king a formal renunciation of their homage and fealty,[997] and chose for themselves a captain-general in the person of Robert Fitz-Walter, to whom they gave the title of “Marshal of the army of God and Holy Church.”[998] They then marched back to Northampton, occupied the town and laid siege to the castle.[999]