An agreement with France was at that moment especially important for Henry because he was anxious to return to England. He began his preparations for departure over sea by making some changes in the custody of his various demesne lands and castles;[240] in particular, he appointed new castellans of his own choosing to the charge of the principal fortresses of Aquitaine. It was hardly possible for Richard not to feel hurt by this measure, “yet his father met with no complaint from him.”[241] Suddenly the king again changed his mind, or at least his policy. We cannot tell whether he was moved by Richard’s unwonted meekness, or whether some unrecorded occurrence opened his eyes to a fact which in all likelihood Richard’s southern counsellors, when they advised the young duke to accede to his father’s demand, foresaw would be made manifest ere long: the fact that Richard was the only person who could preserve anything like administrative order and political security in Aquitaine when Henry himself was out of reach. We only know that at the end of April the king “entrusted to his son Richard an infinite sum of money, bidding him go and subdue his enemies under him,” and then himself sailed for England, taking the queen with him.[242] Richard’s surrender of Poitou was thus practically annulled. It may have been merely verbal, so that no formal act was necessary to reinstate him as count. The particular enemies whom he was to subdue are not named, but it seems plain that the chief of them was Raymond of Toulouse; for Richard “straightway departing (from Normandy) collected a great multitude of knights and foot-soldiers, with which he invaded the lands of the count of S. Gilles and not only ravaged, but conquered, the greater part of them.”[243] Geography suggests that the part of Raymond’s lands which Richard “conquered” at this time was probably the northern part, that is, the Quercy, where Richard as suzerain had already had to chastise more than one of Raymond’s subfeudataries; and this inference is strengthened by later indications. Raymond, helpless before the sudden violence of the duke’s onset, fled from place to place and despatched messenger after messenger to their common overlord, King Philip, imploring succour from France. Philip, however, was just then in no mind to quarrel openly with the king of England or his son; it suited him better to plot secretly with one of the younger sons against the father and the eldest son, and this was what he was actually doing with Geoffrey when in August their plotting was cut short by Geoffrey’s death.[244] A question at once arose whether Henry, the immediate overlord of Britanny, or Philip, the lord paramount, should be guardian of Geoffrey’s child. An embassy sent from England to treat with Philip on this subject met with a very uncivil reception, and went back accompanied by two French knights charged with a message to Henry that he must expect no security from attack in Normandy unless Count