An older man and one of longer training in statecraft and the management of men might easily have doubted his ability to solve the problem which lay before Henry in England. To control a feudal baronage was never an easy task. To re-establish a strong control which for nearly twenty years had been greatly relaxed would be doubly difficult. But in truth the work was more than half done when Henry came to the throne. Since the peace declared at Winchester much had been accomplished, and most of all perhaps in the fact that peace deprived the baron of the even balancing of parties which had been his opportunity. On all sides also men were worn out with the long conflict, and the material, as well as the incentive, to continue it under the changed conditions was lacking. It is likely too that Henry had made an impression in England, during the short time that he had stayed there, very different from that made by Stephen early in his reign; for it is clear that he knew what he wanted and how to get it, and that he would be satisfied with nothing less. Nor did there seem to be anything to justify a fear that arrangements which had been made during the war in favour of individual men were likely to be disturbed. So secure indeed did everything seem that Henry was in no haste to cross to England when the news of Stephen's death reached him. The Duke of Normandy had been occupied with various things since his return from England in April, with the recovery of the ducal lands, with repressing unimportant feudal disorders, and with negotiations with the king of France. On receiving the news he finished the siege of a castle in which he was engaged, then consulted his mother, whose counsel he often sought to the end of her life, in her quiet retreat near Rouen, and finally assembled the barons of Normandy. In about a fortnight he was ready at Barfleur for the passage, but bad winds kept back the unskilful sailors of the time for a month. In England there was no disturbance. Everybody, we are told, feared or loved the duke and expected him to become king, and even the Flemish troops of Stephen kept the peace. If any one acted for the king, it was Archbishop Theobald, but there is no evidence that there was anything for a regent to do. At last, at the end of the first week in December, Henry landed in England and went up at once to Winchester. There he took the homage of the English barons, and from thence after a short delay he went on to London to be crowned. The coronation on the 19th, the Sunday before Christmas, must have been a brilliant ceremony. The Archbishop of Canterbury officiated in the presence of two other archbishops and seventeen bishops, of earls and barons from England and abroad, and an innumerable multitude of people.