validity at any time whatsoever.”[57] ----- Footnote 57: The original bull with the seal of Innocent still attached is preserved in the British Museum (Cotton, Cleopatra E 1), and is carefully printed by Bémont, _Chartes des Libertés Anglaises_, p. 41. It may also be read _inter alia_ in Rymer and in Blackstone. ----- A supplementary bull, of one day’s later date, reminded the barons that the suzerainty of England belonged to Rome, and that therefore nothing could be done in the kingdom without papal consent.[58] Thereafter, at a Lateran Council, Innocent formally excommunicated the English barons who had persecuted “John, King of England, crusader and vassal of the Church of Rome, by endeavouring to take from him his kingdom, a fief of the Holy See.”[59] ----- Footnote 58: The text is given by Rymer. Footnote 59: See Rymer, and Bémont, _Chartes_, xxv. ----- Meanwhile, the points in dispute had been submitted to the rude arbitrament of civil war, in which the first notable success fell to King John in the capture, by assault, of Rochester Castle on 30th November. The barons had already made overtures to Louis, the French King’s son, to whom they promised as a reward for his help, yet not perhaps with entire sincerity, the crown of England. Towards the end of November, some seven thousand French troops arrived in London, where they spent the winter—a winter consumed by John in marching from place to place meeting, on the whole, with success, especially in the east of England. John’s best ally was the Pope, who had no intention of allowing a French Prince to usurp the throne of one who was now his humble vassal. Gualo was dispatched from Rome to Philip, King of France, forbidding his son’s invasion, and asking rather protection and assistance for John as a papal vassal. Philip, anxious to meet the force of the Pope’s arguments with some title to intervene, of more weight than the invitation of a group of rebels, replied by an ingenious string of fictions. He endeavoured to find defects in John’s title as King of England, and to argue that therefore John was not _in titulo_ to grant to the Pope the rights of an overlord. Among other arguments it was urged that John had been convicted of treason while Richard was King, and that this sentence involved forfeiture by the traitor of all rights of succession to the Crown. Thus the Pope’s claim of intervention was invalid, while Prince Louis justified his own interference by some imagined right which he ingeniously argued had passed to him through the mother of his wife.