In the course of the year 1190, therefore, or very early in 1191, John returned to England.[136] In February 1191 the sole remaining check upon both John and William of Longchamp was removed: Queen Eleanor went to join her elder son at Messina.[137] As soon as she was gone, the results of the concession which he had made to her wishes in John’s behalf began to show themselves. On Mid-Lent Sunday, March 24, the count of Mortain and the chancellor had an interview at Winchester “concerning the keepers of certain castles, and the money granted to the count by his brother out of the exchequer.”[138] What passed between them we are not told; but it is clear that they disagreed. Three months elapsed without any overt act of aggression on either side. Then, all at once, about midsummer, it became apparent that a party which for more than a year had been seeking an opportunity to undermine the chancellor’s power had found a rallying-point and a leader in the king’s brother. The sheriff of Lincolnshire and constable of Lincoln Castle, Gerard de Camville, being summoned to answer before the justiciars for having made his great fortress into a hold of robbers and bandits, defied their authority on the plea that he had become John’s liegeman, and was therefore answerable to no one except John.[139] The chancellor deprived Gerard of his sheriffdom and gave it to another man, and laid siege to Lincoln Castle.[140] While he was thus occupied, the castles of Nottingham and Tickhill were given up by their custodians to John.[141] Thereupon John sent to the chancellor a message of insolent defiance. If William did not at once withdraw from Lincoln and leave Gerard in unmolested possession, the count of Mortain threatened to “come and visit him with a rod of iron, and with such a host as he would not be able to withstand.”[142] With a cutting allusion at once to the chancellor’s humble origin and to the readiness with which the commandants of Nottingham and Tickhill had betrayed the fortresses committed to their charge, he added that “no good came of depriving lawful freeborn Englishmen of the offices of trust to which they were entitled, and giving them to unknown strangers; the folly of such a proceeding had just been proved in the case of the royal castles which William had entrusted to men who left them exposed to every passer-by; any chance comer would have found their gates open to him as easily as they had opened to John himself. Such a state of affairs in his brother’s realm he was resolved to tolerate no longer.” The chancellor’s retort was a peremptory summons to John to give up the two castles, and “answer before the king’s court for the breach of his oath.”[143] William probably hoped to get John expelled from England, on the plea that Richard had never really consented to his return and that his absolution was therefore invalid, as having been extorted on a false pretence. The summons appears to have been carried