A third body of troops sent by Louis had arrived in London at the end of February,[1181] and a letter had been received from Louis himself, announcing that “by God’s grace” he would “most certainly” be at Calais ready to cross on Easter Day, April 10.[1182] Encouraged on the one hand by this assurance, on the other the Londoners had been stirred into a mood of dangerous defiance by tidings from Rome. On December 16, 1215, the Pope renewed his condemnation of the barons in such a manner that it could no longer remain what circumstances had made it hitherto, a dead letter. He excommunicated the rebels, this time not merely in general terms, but mentioning thirty-one of them by name; he also placed the city of London under interdict, and he appointed the abbot of Abingdon and two other commissioners to execute this mandate.[1183] It seems to have reached England about the end of February 1216.[1184] The commissioners sent it to all the cathedral and conventual churches for immediate publication, and it was soon published everywhere except in London. There the clergy of S. Paul’s, the barons and the citizens all alike rejected it and appealed against it, declaring that it had been obtained by “false suggestions, and was therefore of no account, more especially as the ordering of lay affairs pertained not to the Pope.”[1185] This last assertion seems ridiculous in the mouths of the barons, who scarce twelve months before had professed pride in having compelled the king to surrender to the Pope the temporal overlordship of England. It was in a spirit of mingled rage at the downfall of the expectations which they had once founded upon that surrender, and revived hope of speedy help from France, that the revolutionists who held the capital met the king’s threat of attack. The citizens opened their gates and arrayed themselves “ready to go forth and fight with him if he should approach within ten leagues of the city.”[1186] Advancing slowly and cautiously, he reached Enfield on the last day of March;[1187] on the following night he seems to have slept at Waltham Abbey, “seven little English leagues from London.”[1188] But he came no nearer. Savaric de Mauléon, venturing on a closer approach, was caught at unawares and barely escaped with heavy loss of men and with a wound of which he all but died; a band of “pirates” who attempted to block the Thames were all either slain, drowned or captured by the Londoners; and evil tidings came from the north how the rebels there had risen anew, laid siege to York, and pressed it so hard that the citizens had been compelled to purchase for a thousand marks a truce till Trinity Sunday.[1189] From Enfield the king passed round by Berkhamsted to Windsor and Reading, and thence went south into Hampshire.[1190]