This temporary pacification was effected by a promise on John’s part that the quarrel between him and the Lusignans should be tried and settled fairly in his court as duke of Aquitaine.[350] Towards the end of July he went to Chinon; there he spent the greater part of the next six weeks,[351] and it was probably there that he summoned the Lusignans to the promised trial. But meanwhile the Lusignans had discovered that the trial which he designed was something wholly different from that which Philip had demanded on their behalf. John, before he left England, had determined to appeal “the barons of Poitou”--that is, no doubt, the Lusignans and their friends--on a general charge of treason against his late brother and himself, and challenge them to ordeal of battle with a number of champions specially chosen for the purpose. This project was perfectly legal; the ordeal of battle, though it was beginning to be discountenanced by public opinion under the influence of the Church, was still recognized as a lawful method of deciding upon a charge of treason. But a simultaneous challenge to so large a number of men, and men, too, of such high rank and personal distinction as the Lusignans and their allies, was a startling innovation upon feudal tradition and practice, and unwarranted by historical precedent. Moreover, there was in the scheme another feature which would make it doubly offensive to the barons concerned. The champions against whom they were called upon to prove their loyalty are described as “picked men, practised in the art of duelling, whom the king had hired and brought with him from his dominions on both sides of the sea.”[352] That is, they were professional champions--men who made a business of hiring themselves out to fight the battles of any one who either could not or would not fight in his own person, but who could afford to pay for an efficient substitute. Such hired champions, of course, in every case represented the person who hired them; in the present case they would have represented the king; yet nobles like the Lusignans, two of whose brothers had been, no less than John himself, crowned and anointed sovereigns, could not but feel it an intolerable insult to be challenged, even in a king’s name, by creatures such as these. The accused barons all alike refused to come to John’s court, “saying that they would answer to no one save to their peers.”[353] It seems that on a fresh remonstrance from Philip, John again consented, or pretended to consent, to a trial such as they demanded; but he was very unwilling to fix a day; and when he did fix one, he refused to give the defendants a safe conduct, without which, of course, they would not stir from their homes.[354] [Sidenote: 1201–1202]