At length perceiving that the promises of John had been merely subterfuges for gaining time, William prepared to put his threats into execution; but the proper season for action had already passed away, and the English barons, not yet disgusted by the falsehood and tyranny of John, had for the present declared in his favour. A natural feeling of anxiety oppressed the mind of William as he recalled the events of his early manhood, and remembered the consequences of his former war with England. His kingdom was still unsettled, his health was beginning to fail, whilst his heir was still a mere child, and Scotland had hardly yet recovered from the disastrous state of anarchy into which she had been plunged by the capture of her king at Alnwick. Impressed with gloomy forebodings, the king determined upon passing the night by the shrine of his sainted ancestress at Dunfermline; where his reluctance to engage in hostilities assuming the form of a warning dream, he dismissed his army on the following morning, assuring them that he had been forbidden by a heavenly vision to attempt the invasion of England.[485] [Sidenote: A. D. 1200.] William had given up all present thoughts of open war, but he refused to listen to any overtures from John, declining to meet the English king at York in the following Lent, whilst he cultivated an alliance with Philip of France, and a marriage was negotiated between the young prince of Scotland and an infant French princess, the daughter of Agnes de Meranie.[486] The rumour of this alliance seriously alarmed John, and after the second of his numerous coronations, he dispatched a distinguished embassy with letters of safe conduct to the borders, to propose an interview with the king of Scotland, and to escort him for this purpose to Lincoln. With the Bishop of Durham and the Sheriff of Northumberland were associated the Earl of Hereford and the Lords de Vesci and de Ros, the nephew and sons-in-law of William, who, with the Earls of Huntingdon and Norfolk, and a brilliant retinue of other barons, awaited the arrival of the Scottish king on the frontiers, and conducted him, with every mark of respect, to the place of meeting. Here, upon a neighbouring hill, which was at that time without the city of Lincoln, William performed homage to John “for his right saving his own right;” [Sidenote: 22d Nov.] swearing fealty upon the cross of the Archbishop of Canterbury--a breach of the usual custom, explained by one of the chroniclers as arising “because there was no sacred book at hand.” The question about the northern counties was again brought forward for discussion, but with no satisfactory result, although a final decision was again promised at the end of another six months; and the king of Scotland, who had in reality gained nothing beyond his ordinary feudal advantages by his journey, was obliged to rest contented with the empty honour of returning to his own kingdom under