Henry meanwhile had come to an agreement with the king of France which was likely to have an important influence on the future of Richard and of his duchy. On December 6, [Sidenote: 1183] 1183, the two kings held a conference, and Henry did a thing which he had never before consented to do: he did homage to Philip for “all his territories on the French side of the sea.”[225] Philip’s acceptance of this homage constituted a legal recognition on his part, as lord paramount, of Henry as—among other things—duke of Aquitaine. The kings then proceeded to make a new settlement about the dowry of young Henry’s widow. As she was childless, that portion of it which was in the hands of her father-in-law—Gisors and the rest of the Norman Vexin—legally reverted to France on her husband’s death. Philip, however, in consideration of an annuity to be paid by Henry to Margaret, “quit-claimed Gisors to the English king, so that he might give it to whichever of his sons he should choose, with the French king’s other sister,” Aloysia.[226] Henry evidently hoped to keep Aloysia and her dowry by substituting John for Richard as her bridegroom, and thus to facilitate the winning of Philip’s assent to the further substitution of John for Richard as heir of Aquitaine. Richard was probably quite [Sidenote: 1183-4] willing to relinquish his personal claim upon Aloysia; there is no indication that he had ever cared for her; and on the other hand there are indications that about this time he formed an attachment to another maiden of royal birth, Berengaria of Navarre.[227] On the subject of Aquitaine, however, he was immoveable. In vain Henry alternately besought and commanded him to grant “if not the whole of Aquitaine, at least a part of it,” to John. Richard’s answer was always the same: never, so long as he lived, would he give any part of the duchy [Sidenote: 1184] to anyone. At last, in a burst of anger, Henry gave John leave to “lead an army into Richard’s land and get what he wanted from his brother by fighting him.”[228] The words were probably uttered without thought of their consequences, in a fit of ungovernable impatience at Richard’s obduracy; but John was quite ready to take them literally, and knew that his next brother, Geoffrey—who had been formally reconciled to his father and to Richard in July 1183[229]—both could and would supply him with means for his purpose. No sooner had the king returned to England in June 1184 than Geoffrey and John collected “a great host” and marched plundering and burning into Richard’s land. Henry, when he learned what was going on, peremptorily summoned all the three to England, brought them to a public reconciliation in November, and then sought to dispose for a while of Geoffrey where he could make no further mischief between the two others, by sending him, not back to Britanny, but to Normandy, as a nominal assistant to the officers who were in charge of that