Pandulf and Peter des Roches, meanwhile, had enlisted the services of the Dean of Poitiers, who visited England in August, to negotiate with Hugh of La Marche for a truce.[670] A carucage “for our great needs, most urgent debts, and the preservation of our land of Poitou” had been agreed upon in a council at Oxford on 9th August.[671] Negotiations with the communes of La Rochelle and Bordeaux for a loan “for the safe keeping of Poitou and Gascony” were begun in September.[672] These two towns, with Niort and S. Jean d’Angély, had now resolved upon sending representatives to England to lay their complaints before the Council; the Preceptor of the Temple, Gerard Brochard, at their request undertook to accompany these envoys, and begged the Council to give him and them an audience in London in the week after Michaelmas, “to hear the proposals of the count of La Marche, and of others, on all sides.” Gerard, it is clear, was in the confidence of all parties, and he declared positively that if the Council would listen to him, the damsel Joan would be restored to them in honour and freedom; “she would have been delivered to me,” he said, “if I would have stood surety that the King would do to the count what he ought.”[673] Probably Gerard received in London, and thence transmitted to Hugh, a formal assurance that Henry would “do what he ought”--in other words, surrender his mother’s dowry. At the same time the Pope took up the matter; and a letter from him, on 20th September, threatening that if Hugh did not within fifteen days after its receipt deliver Joan, together with the city of Saintes and the Isle of Oléron (which had been pledged to him by John as security for her dowry) to Henry’s appointed representatives, he should be excommunicated and his lands placed under interdict,[674] was followed by Hugh’s submission, so far as the surrender of Joan herself was concerned. In obedience to an order from England issued on 6th October that he should either himself bring Joan to England, or deliver her at La Rochelle to certain persons appointed to receive her there,[675] he set out with the child; but he fell sick at Oléron, where the Dean of Poitiers and the new seneschal of Aquitaine, Philip of Ulecote, had been ordered to meet him. The Dean waited for the seneschal in vain, and at last learned that he was dead.[676] At the beginning of November Hugh, being too ill to proceed, delivered Joan to the commissioners--the Dean and two other envoys--who escorted her to La Rochelle.[677] The term fixed for her marriage was past, but at its expiration, on 13th October, Henry and Alexander had met again at York,[678] and Alexander had evidently consented to wait for her with patience; he waited in fact till the following Midsummer. Her stepfather, when he gave her up to Henry’s commissioners, assured them of his intention to go and perform his homage for La Marche and Angoulême as soon as his health should permit him.[679] Thus for a few