Richard arose from his sick-bed in a towering rage,[1215] and with a grim determination which gave a new character to the war. The successes achieved by the French while he lay helpless had borne in upon him the fact that if he was to retain what was still left to him of Normandy—nay, if the House of Anjou was to retain its continental power at all—some better plan of campaign and of diplomacy must be devised than the alternation of border-fighting and treaties or truces, made only to be broken, in which his personal energies as well as his material and military resources had been frittered away during the last two years. He must by some means bar the way to Rouen, laid open to Philip by the cession of the Vexin. He must shield and supplement his military resources, consisting as they did only of mercenary troops stiffened by a small band of loyal Normans, by securing at least the neutrality, if not the direct active assistance, of France’s other feudataries and neighbours. From England there was no help to be got. No action seems to have been taken by Archbishop Hubert on the king’s demand addressed to him in the spring for troops from that country. In November the demand was renewed in another form; Richard bade Hubert send him either three hundred knights to serve beyond sea at their own expense for a year, or money wherewith to pay three hundred mercenaries three English shillings a day for the same period. A great council was convened at Oxford on December 7; Hubert, instead of laying before it the alternatives offered by the king, simply proposed that all the barons and bishops should furnish three hundred knights for a year’s service over sea. This Bishop Hugh of Lincoln at once refused on behalf of his own see; its tenants being bound to military service only in their own country. The bishop of Salisbury followed Hugh’s example. The justiciar lost his temper and broke up the assembly; and all that Richard gained was a heavy fine paid by Herbert of Salisbury in redemption of the property of his see, confiscated by the king’s order on Hubert’s report. The property of the see of Lincoln was confiscated likewise, but in this case the order remained a dead letter owing to the profound reverence universally felt for the bishop.[1216]