At length the riot and pillage came to an end, and the king’s peace having been proclaimed through the city, the conquerors ate and drank merrily in celebrating the victory they had so easily gained against great odds. Ere this, however, everything having been settled, Pembroke prepared to carry to the king tidings of the great triumph which had crowned the efforts of his adherents. Having, therefore, instructed the barons and knights to return to the fortresses of which they were castellans, and to carry their prisoners with them, and to keep them safely in custody till the king’s pleasure was known, the protector, without even dining or taking food, rode off to Stowe to inform young Henry of the great victory, which made him in reality sovereign of England. Even next day the consequences began to appear. Early on Sunday morning couriers reached Stowe with intelligence that Henry de Braybroke and his garrison had abandoned Mount Sorrel, and the king sent orders to the Sheriff of Nottingham to raze the castle to the ground. Of all the men of rank who fought in the battle few fell. Indeed, only two are mentioned by name--Richard, surnamed Crocus, and the Count de Perche--one on the winning, the other on the losing side. Richard, who was Falco’s brave knight, was carried by his companions to Croxton and laid with all honour in the abbey. The Count de Perche, whose comrades-in-arms were slain, or taken, or fled, and who, as an excommunicated man, could not, of course, be laid in consecrated ground, was interred in the orchard of the hospital of St. Giles, founded by Bishop Remigius outside the walls of Lincoln as a house of refuge for decayed priests. And so ended the battle of Lincoln in a victory of which Pembroke might well and justly be proud. It not only overthrew the army on which Louis relied for success in his enterprise, but it utterly undid all the work which he had been doing in England since that June day when he rode into London amidst the cheers of an unreasoning multitude. As for the feudal magnates who had offered him a crown which was not theirs to give, and who had done him homage as their sovereign, they were no longer in a position to aid him, even if they had been so inclined, but captives at the mercy of a king whose father they had hunted to death, and whose inheritance they had attempted to give to a stranger. Besides Robert Fitzwalter and the Anglo-Norman earls and barons, three hundred knights and a multitude of men holding inferior rank were prisoners. Moreover, the spoil was regarded as something marvellous, and the English, remembering the multitudinous articles of value that fell into their hands that day as booty, and the ease with which they had obtained it, though so much the weaker party, were long in the habit of talking jocularly of that very memorable Saturday in the Whitsuntide of the year 1217, and with grim humour describing the battle as “LINCOLN FAIR.” CHAPTER LIV AN AWKWARD PREDICAMENT