The king was not behindhand in his preparations for war. His friends were already mustering at Gloucester; on April 30 he requested them to proceed thence on the following Monday (May 3), well furnished with horses and arms, and with “all the men they could get,” to Cirencester, there to await his further commands.[1000] Orders were issued for strengthening the fortifications of London, Oxford, Norwich, Bristol and Salisbury.[1001] The earls of Salisbury, Warren, Pembroke and others perambulated the country to see that the royal castles were properly fortified and manned;[1002] help was summoned from Flanders[1003] and from Poitou.[1004] Early in May the king returned for a couple of days to London;[1005] and as fourteen years before he had won the support of its citizens in his struggle with Richard’s chancellor by granting to them the “commune” which they desired, so now he endeavoured to secure their adhesion by confirming their liberties and adding to them the crowning privilege of a fully constituted municipality, the right to elect their own mayor every year.[1006] Meanwhile the “northern” barons had found Northampton castle too strong to be taken without military engines which they did not possess; so at the end of a fortnight they had raised the siege and moved on to Bedford. Here the castle was given up to them by its commandant, William de Beauchamp.[1007] Their forces were rapidly increasing in number; the younger men especially, sons and nephews of the greater barons, joined them readily, “wishing to make for themselves a name in war”; the elder magnates, for the most part, clave to the king “as their lord.”[1008]