days; five more were spent in waiting there for a wind; at last, on March 12 or 13, the king landed at Sandwich, and straightway went to offer up his thanksgivings at the shrine of S. Thomas the Martyr at Canterbury.[1123] On [Sidenote: _March 16_] March 16 he entered London in a triumphal procession to S. Paul’s.[1124] Clergy and people gave him a rapturous welcome; and the sumptuous decorations of the city were beheld with amazement by some German nobles who accompanied him, and who had supposed the wealth of England to be exhausted by his ransom. One of them, it is said, actually told him that he would not have been released without a much heavier payment if the Emperor could have known that such riches existed in the island realm.[1125] The welcome was mainly a clerical and popular one, because most of the lay barons were occupied in trying to put down a revolt stirred up by John. They had made some progress towards this end before Richard’s arrival; most of John’s castles had been captured, but two, Nottingham and Tickhill, were still holding out. Richard went to work leisurely. He spent “scarcely a day” in London; but he left it to make another pilgrimage, to S. Edmund’s.[1126] He knew that he could afford to wait. Both castles were closely besieged, the one by the earls of Huntingdon, Chester, and Ferrars, the other by the bishop of Durham. Another great rebel stronghold, Mount Saint Michael’s in Cornwall, had surrendered before the king’s return because at the tidings of his coming its commandant died of fright. The garrison of Tickhill now sent two knights to ascertain whether the king was really home, and if he were, to offer him the castle. He refused to receive it unless they would all surrender at discretion. While the envoys carried this message back to Tickhill, he marched upon Nottingham,[1127] and on March 25 arrived there “with such a numerous force and such a noise of trumpets and horns” as greatly alarmed the garrison; nevertheless, hoping that all this was merely a display contrived by the nobles to make them believe the king had returned, they continued to shoot from the walls, and shot down some of his men almost at his feet. At this he waxed wroth and assaulted the castle. One rebel knight was killed by a bolt from Richard’s own crossbow; the barbicans were taken and the outer gates burnt.[1128] The place was, however, of such strength as to appear, if well defended, impregnable except by starvation; and it was amply supplied with provisions as well as with men.[1129] Next morning Richard began to prepare his stone-casters, and also set up in view of the castle a gallows on which he hanged some of John’s men-at-arms who had been captured outside it. Meanwhile Tickhill had been surrendered to Bishop Hugh on his assurance that the lives of the garrison should be spared; and on March 27 he, with his prisoners, joined the king.[1130] That day, while the king was at dinner, the constables