Richard’s first act was the despatch of a messenger to Henry of Champagne and the other Christian nobles in Syria to tell them that he was free, “and that, if God would avenge him of his enemies and grant him peace, he would at the appointed time come to help them against the heathens.” [Sidenote: _Feb. 4_] On the same day the Emperor and his magnates wrote to Philip and John bidding them deliver up immediately whatever they had taken from Richard during his captivity; otherwise restitution would be enforced by the writers to the uttermost of their power.[1118] Protected by an imperial safe-conduct to Antwerp, and accompanied by his mother and his chancellor, Richard set out on a leisurely progress down the Rhine. At Cologne he was sumptuously [Sidenote: _Feb. 20-22_?] entertained for three days in the archbishop’s palace, and on the third day was asked to attend Mass in the church of S. Peter. The day was probably the festival of S. Peter’s Chair at Antioch (February 22); Archbishop Adolf chose to act as precentor, and began the Mass not with the proper introit, but with that of the feast of S. Peter in Chains—“Now know I of a surety that the Lord hath sent His Angel and hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod.” The choice was doubtless made in compliment to the royal guest; whether the archbishop failed to notice, or deliberately ignored, the comparison of the Emperor to Herod which it involved, we are not told. Adolf indeed was only one of a crowd of imperial feudataries who were eager to make a friend of the English king. By the time Richard arrived at Antwerp not only Adolf but also the archbishop of Mentz, the bishop-elect of Liége, the dukes of Austria, Suabia, Louvain, and Limburg, the count of Holland, the son of the count of Hainaut, the marquis of Montferrat, and many others, were bound to him by homage and fealty—saving, of course, their fealty to the Emperor—for certain revenues which he granted them by charter, on condition of their help against the king of France.[1119] Possibly the Emperor may have taken alarm at [Sidenote: _Feb._] these alliances between his vassals and his late captive, for one English chronicler tells us that he sent out some men to overtake and recapture him.[1120] Richard, however, under the personal escort of Archbishop Adolf, passed through the lands of the duke of Louvain to Antwerp, where some of his own ships awaited him.[1121] The wind being unfavourable for a direct passage to England,[1122] he slowly made his way by sea to a port which Roger of Howden calls “Swine in Flanders, in the lands of the Count of Hainaut”—either Swyn, between Breeden and Ostend, in the present West Flanders, or Zwin, on the Belgian frontier of the Dutch province of Seeland—coasting along by day in Alan Trenchemer’s galley “because in that it was easier to pass through among the islands,” and spending the nights on “a large and splendid ship which had come from Rye.” Swine was [Sidenote: _March 4-7_] reached in three