On May 9 the king--now at Windsor--proposed that the quarrel should be decided by eight arbitrators, four to be chosen by himself and four by “the barons who are against us,” with the Pope as “superior” over them; he offered the earl of Warren and four bishops as sureties for his own acceptance of the award, and promised that until it was delivered he would take no forcible measures against the insurgents, “save according to the law of the realm and the judgement of their peers in his court.”[1009] This proposal seems to have been rejected at once, for two days later John ordered the sheriffs to seize the lands, goods and chattels of “his enemies” in their several shires and apply them to his benefit.[1010] Almost immediately afterwards he seems to have commissioned the archbishop of Canterbury to negotiate a truce for a few days. On the 16th he appointed his brother, Earl William of Salisbury, to act as his representative in London.[1011] The object of William’s mission evidently was to secure, if possible, the loyalty of the “mayor, aldermen and other barons of London,” which John suspected to be wavering. His suspicion was correct; a plot for the betrayal of the city was already ripe, and on the very next morning--Sunday, May 17--the insurgents were masters of the capital.[1012] The first use they made of this success was to fill their pockets with plunder taken from the king’s partisans in the city, and from the Jews; the next was to pull down the Jews’ houses and use the stones for repairing the city walls. They then sent letters to all the earls, barons and knights who still adhered to the king, “bidding them, if they cared to retain their property and goods, forsake a king who was perjured and in rebellion against his barons, and join with them in standing firmly and fighting strongly for the peace and liberty of the realm; threatening that if they neglected so to do, they, the writers, would direct their banners and their arms against them as against public enemies, and do their utmost to overthrow their castles, burn their dwellings, and destroy their fishponds, orchards and parks.” These invitations and threats brought over to the winning side all who had been waiting to see which way the tide would turn, and they, of course, made a right goodly company.[1013]