The day was a Friday; “an unlucky day,” remarks an English chronicler of the time.[1115] There was a special reason for the remark. Henry, as we have seen, had promised to invest Richard on his release with the kingdom of Arles or Burgundy. This kingdom, as such, had ceased to exist more than a century and a half before, and over a great part of the lands which had composed it the German Emperors had now no practical authority or control. It seems that at the last moment Henry suddenly required his prisoner to do him homage, not for Burgundy—of which we hear no more—but for all the possessions of the Angevin house, including the kingdom of England; and Richard, seeing no way of escape, and urged by his mother, went through a ceremony of surrender, investiture and homage Which, if it had been binding, would have made him a vassal of the Empire for the whole of his dominions.[1116] Such a transaction was, however, void in law, on two grounds. Firstly, no account was taken in it either of the French king’s rights as overlord of Richard’s continental territories, or of the immemorial right of the English Crown to absolute independence. Secondly, Richard had been driven to it under compulsion, as the only means of regaining his freedom and rescuing his dominions from imminent peril—for a refusal would certainly have resulted in an immediate alliance between Henry and Philip. Homage done under such conditions was a mere empty form, a concession to the vanity of the Emperor, who was ready to clutch at any expedient for magnifying himself in the eyes of his own vassals and inflicting as much outward degradation as he dared on the captive whom he—seeing that he could now wring out of him no further profit, financial or political—thereupon set at liberty.[1117]