that if he did so they would seize all his lands for the Crown.[180] For a while John hesitated, or affected to hesitate; he had indeed at least two other secret negotiations on hand beside that with France, and he was probably waiting to see which of the three most required his personal superintendence, or was likely to prove most profitable. Another proposition besides Philip’s had come to him from over sea: Longchamp had offered to give him five hundred pounds if he would get him reinstated as chief justiciar of England.[181] John cared very little who bore the title of justiciar, if he could secure the power for himself; his main object in England was to gain possession of the royal castles; with these in his hands, he could set any justiciar at defiance. The arrangement made in the previous July had been terminated by the chancellor’s fall, and the castles of Nottingham and Tickhill had therefore, in accordance with the last clause of the July agreement, been restored in October to John. The very rash project of placing all the royal castles under John’s control, said to have been mooted in London at the same time, had evidently not been carried into effect;[182] but John himself had never lost sight of it, and, as a chronicler says, “he did what he could” towards its realization. He began with two of the most important fortresses near the capital, Windsor and Wallingford. He dealt secretly with their commanding officers, so that they were delivered into his hands and filled with liegemen of his own.[183] This would be easy to manage in the case of Wallingford, which stood within an “honour” belonging to John himself. The custody of Windsor castle seems to have been, after the chancellor’s fall, entrusted for a time to the bishop of Durham, Hugh of Puiset,[184] a near kinsman of the royal house. In spite of the fact that Hugh was under sentence of excommunication from his metropolitan, Geoffrey of York, John had chosen to spend the Christmas of 1191 with him at Howden; thereby of course rendering himself, in Geoffrey’s estimation at least, _ipso facto_ excommunicate likewise, till he made satisfaction for his offence.[185] Hugh of Durham had once hoped himself to supersede Longchamp as chief justiciar, and it is perhaps not too much to suspect that John may have so wrought upon the old bishop’s jealousy of Walter of Rouen as to induce him to connive at a proceeding on the part of his representatives at Windsor which would more than compensate his wily young cousin for the temporary ecclesiastical disgrace brought upon him by that otherwise unaccountable Christmas visit.