with a promise that they would acknowledge him as king if Richard should die without issue.[173] The barons, the bishops, the justiciars, all London, all England, save a handful of Longchamp’s own relatives, personal friends and followers, was on John’s side; Longchamp himself, besieged in the Tower by overwhelming forces, could not possibly hold it for more than a day or two, and there was no hope of relief. There was, however, still one chance of escape from all his difficulties,--John might be bribed. The project seemed a desperate one, for William had already tried it without success, two days before;[174] yet he tried it again on the Wednesday, and this time he all but succeeded. “By promising him much and giving him not a little, the chancellor so nearly turned the count of Mortain from his purpose that he was ready to withdraw from the city, leaving the business unfinished, had not the bishops of Coventry and York recalled him by their entreaties and arguments.”[175] Next day the chancellor submitted. On the Friday {Oct. 11} he gave up the keys of the Tower and of Windsor; within another fortnight he was reduced to surrender all the other royal castles except the three which had been nominally reserved to him, Dover, Cambridge, and Hereford.[176] Hereupon John ordered him to be released, and allowed him to sail on October 29 for France.[177] [Sidenote: 1192] The truth of Longchamp’s assertion that John was “endeavouring to usurp the kingdom for himself” was soon made evident. Just before Christmas Philip Augustus of France came home from Acre. After a vain attempt to entrap the seneschal of Normandy into surrendering some of the border fortresses of the duchy to him, he opened negotiations for Richard’s damage in a more likely quarter; he invited John to come over and speak with him immediately, proposing to put him in possession of “all the lands of England and Normandy on this (_i.e._ the French) side of the sea,” on one condition, that he should marry the bride whom Richard had refused, Philip’s sister Adela.[178] To this condition John’s existing marriage was a bar, but not an insuperable one; it would be easy for him to divorce Isabel on the plea of consanguinity if he were so minded. He responded eagerly to Philip’s invitation, and was on the point of sailing from Southampton for France, when his plans were upset by his mother’s landing at Portsmouth on February 11.[179] The French king’s treachery had come to Eleanor’s knowledge, and she had hastened back to England to do what lay in her power for the protection of her elder son’s interests. The justiciars, who seem to have already had their suspicions of John’s loyalty, rallied round her at once. She was in fact the only person whose right to represent the absent king was treated by all parties as indisputable, although she had never held any formal commission as regent. She and the justiciars conjointly forbade John to leave the country, threatening