Of the northern rising we hear no more, but it seems to have proved a failure, for before April 12 three of the chief northern barons, Eustace de Vesci, Robert de Ros and Peter de Brus, offered to return to the king’s service on one condition--that he would allow them to do so without a fine. John’s answer was as politic as it was dignified. “What we desire to have from our barons,” he wrote, “is not so much money as their good and faithful service”; and he sent the three petitioners a safe-conduct to come and speak with him on their own terms.[1191] On the previous day he had given orders that the mayor of York should be “competently provided” out of the lands of the king’s enemies “for his good and faithful service which he did to the king,”[1192] no doubt in the defence of the city during the recent siege. The mayor’s loyalty and the king’s promptitude in rewarding it illustrate a feature of John’s home policy which is traceable through all the vicissitudes of his career: his interest in the towns and the trading classes, and his constant endeavours to cultivate their friendship. All the while that he was harrying the open country, burning villages and plundering castles, he was making careful provision for the furtherance of trade, the security of travelling merchants[1193] and the preservation of foreign commerce from disturbance or interruption. With a French invasion close at hand, he was still issuing safe-conducts to French merchants in London and elsewhere.[1194] For this, indeed, there may have been a political reason; John was anxious to keep on good terms with France in order to counterwork the schemes of the barons in that quarter. He had lately sent an embassy to try whether Philip Augustus could by any means be induced to forbid his son’s proposed expedition.[1195] One of the envoys at least, William the Marshal, was back by Easter,[1196] the day which Louis had fixed for his own departure. That day passed and Louis came not--hindered, it seems, by contrary winds.[1197] About this time John sent a letter to Louis himself, signifying his willingness to amend any injury which Louis might have received at his hands;[1198] and on April 28 he wrote to the guardians of the truce in France proposing that they should hold a meeting with his proctors for the settlement of all disputes which had arisen from infractions of the truce.[1199] [Sidenote: 1216]