secure William’s homage before setting out on the Crusade. To go without having done so would have been to leave northern England without any safeguard against invasion and ravage during his absence. He himself had neither time nor means to spare for an expedition against Scotland. Had William chosen to delay indefinitely—as more than one of his predecessors had done—his appearance at the English court, he could easily, and probably with impunity, have put Richard in a very awkward position. Most likely he would have done so but for Richard’s tact in turning the difficulty. Overlord and vassal agreed upon a bargain which was in all likelihood more profitable to both parties than the one proposed a year before could ever have been to either of them. William covenanted to give Richard a lump sum of ten thousand marks;[433] Richard quit-claimed “all customs and agreements which King Henry extorted from William by reason of his capture, so that he shall fully and completely do to us what his brother Malcolm King of Scots rightly did to our predecessors and what he ought rightly to do”; he renounced the liege homage of William’s men and restored all the charters given to Henry by William when he was Henry’s prisoner; and he undertook to do to William “whatsoever our predecessors rightly did and ought to have done to Malcolm according to a recognition to be made by four English nobles chosen by [Sidenote: _Dec. 5_] William and four Scottish nobles chosen by ourself”; to make good any encroachments which had taken place on the Scottish Marches since William’s capture; to confirm any grants made to William by Henry; and finally, that William and his heirs for ever should possess his English lands as fully and freely as Malcolm had possessed or ought to have possessed them.[434]