The darkest secrets connected with the league did not come out till after Christmas. The festival week was spent by the two Henrys, Richard, and Geoffrey, at Caen.[171] On [Sidenote: 1183] January 1, 1183, the young king, “of his own accord, no one compelling him,” publicly took an oath on the Gospels that he would serve his father loyally and faithfully from that time forth; “and because—as he asserted—he desired to retain in his mind no malice or rancour whereby his father might afterwards be offended, he made known to him that he (young Henry) was bound by an agreement with the barons of Aquitaine against his brother Richard; having been moved thereto because the castle of Clairvaux had been built against his will, in the patrimony which was his rightful inheritance, by his said brother; wherefore he besought his father to take that castle from Richard and retain it in his own keeping.” Richard, when admonished by his father on the subject, at first refused to give up the castle, but afterwards at his father’s desire “freely made it over to him to dispose of it according to his good pleasure.”[172] The question of Clairvaux was thus settled for the lifetime of the elder king; the settlement was that which the younger one had himself proposed, and it ought to have led to his immediate withdrawal from his engagements with Richard’s enemies. But the incident had a further significance which filled Henry II with dismay. It showed him that on his death not only might this particular dispute between young Henry and Richard be reopened, but a crowd of other disputes might arise among all his sons about their feudal relations with each other, and that unless these relations were fixed beforehand, all his schemes for preserving the integrity of the Angevin dominions would probably come to nought. As soon as the festival season was over he set out with his sons for Anjou. When they reached Le Mans, he expressed his desire that young Henry, as the future head of the family, should receive the homage of Richard and Geoffrey for their respective duchies.[173] It seems that the proposition was made privately to the young king, and was at least tacitly accepted by him. Accordingly, on arriving at Angers, Henry II took measures for confirming once for all “a bond of perpetual peace” between the three brothers. First, each of them swore to keep his fealty to his father always and against all men, and always to render to him due honour and service. Next, they all swore that they would “always keep peace among themselves according to the disposition made by their father.”[174] Whatever may have been the case with regard to Geoffrey and Britanny, it appears that Richard, at least, was thus far wholly unaware that the “disposition” which he was thus pledged to respect implied any arrangements beyond those which already existed concerning his tenure of Poitou or of Aquitaine. The elder king now publicly called upon the younger one to receive Geoffrey’s