Negotiations for a truce with France were now again in progress. On July 23 some officers of the two royal households met, by mutual consent of their sovereigns, between Verneuil and Tillières to treat of this matter, and “came to terms.” The only extant account of these terms—a proclamation addressed by the French king’s constable and chamberlain and the dean of S. Martin’s “to all whom it may concern”[1172]—shows them to have been extremely favourable to Philip; and from this fact, together with Richard’s subsequent action, we may probably infer that their acceptance by the English negotiators was merely a blind to restrain Philip from aggression in Normandy while Richard was still occupied in the south. When he returned to Normandy he, according to a contemporary English writer, repudiated them indignantly, and took away the Great Seal from his chancellor, on whom he cast the responsibility for them.[1173] The king’s wrath and the chancellor’s disgrace were, however, alike only momentary; William of Ely retained his office to the end of Richard’s reign; and a month after the conference at which the truce had been arranged Richard himself was sojourning peaceably within the Royal Domain of France, issuing an ordinance to his subjects in England from Bresle near Beauvais.[1174] The duration of the truce had been defined as “a year from All Saints’ Day next.”[1175] During this breathing-space Richard’s chief concern was the collecting of money for a renewal of the war. England had been so drained for his ransom that he, or his justiciar who acted for him, did not venture on demanding a “scutage of Normandy” till the following year (1195).[1176] Nor did the king attempt to carry out at this time—if indeed he had momentarily entertained it—the project ascribed to him by Roger of Howden, of annulling all grants made under the existing Great Seal, of course for the purpose of compelling their holders to pay for a renewal of them.[1177] But on his way northward from Aquitaine he had called together at Le Mans “all the magnates under his jurisdiction,” and made them a speech in commendation of the “willing, unbroken, and well-proved fidelity shewn to him by the English in his time of adversity,”[1178] seemingly in contrast to the feeble support which he had received from his Angevin dominions; for we are told that he compelled all his bailiffs in Anjou and Maine to pay him a fine for retaining their offices.[1179] The device which he actually employed at this juncture for obtaining more money from England, though it sowed the seeds of later mischief there, was not likely to provoke discontent nor to inflict any hardship on the people; on August 22 he issued an ordinance authorizing the holding of tournaments in England—from which they had hitherto been rigidly excluded—at certain specified places, on condition that every man who took part in them should make a certain payment to the Crown for a licence, the sum payable being