On the same day Richard proceeded to Dover;[438] about [Sidenote: _Dec. 11, 14_] a week later he went to Normandy.[439] He kept Christmas[440] [Sidenote: _Dec. 25_] in great state, “but,” adds a poet-chronicler, “there was little singing of _gestes_”; Richard, who usually revelled in that kind of entertainment, was now too busy and in too grave a mood for minstrelsy.[441] On December 30 he and [Sidenote: _Dec. 30_] Philip, after holding a conference at the Gué St. Rémi, issued a joint proclamation setting forth their arrangements for going together on the Crusade and for the safety and mutual protection of each other’s subjects and dominions during their absence, and bidding all their Crusader subjects either to precede them or be ready to set out with them from Vézelay within the octave of Easter (March 25-April 1).[442] [Sidenote: 1190 _Jan._] By the middle of January, however, both kings had discovered that they could not be ready by April. The date of departure was again postponed, to S. John the Baptist’s day; and at a third conference held in the middle of March the delay was further prolonged to the octave of that festival.[443] Richard meanwhile had made a visit to Aquitaine; on February 2-4 he was at La Réole,[444] on February 12 at Londigny on the border of the Angoumois and Poitou,[445] moving back towards Normandy to meet certain persons whom he had summoned thither from England soon after Candlemas. One of the two men whom he had appointed as joint chief justiciars, William de Mandeville, had died on November 14.[446] For a time, it seems, the king put no one formally into Mandeville’s place, and thus left Hugh of Durham legally sole chief justiciar; but he gave the custody of the Tower of London, which usually appertained to that officer, to the chancellor, Bishop William of Ely, whom he also, before leaving England, intrusted with one of the royal seals “to carry out the king’s orders in the realm,” thus making him virtually independent of Hugh.[447] In February, however, the king summoned his mother, his betrothed, his brothers John and Geoffrey (the archbishop-elect of York), Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, and seven bishops, among whom were Hugh of Durham and William of Ely, to join him in Normandy. “And when he had taken counsel with them, he appointed his chancellor, Bishop William of Ely, chief justiciar of [Sidenote: _Feb._] England, and granted to Bishop Hugh of Durham the justiciarship from the river Humber to the Scot king’s border.”[448] He also made both his brothers swear that they would not enter England for three years “from that hour” except by leave from him.[449] At the end of March or early in April[450] he sent the new chief justiciar, William of Ely, back to England “to prepare things necessary for him”—that is, for the king—“and for his journey.”[451]