The French party now held, besides London, the chief strongholds of Surrey and Hampshire--Reigate, Guildford, Odiham, Farnham, Winchester, Southampton, Porchester; Marlborough, just within the Wiltshire border, seems to have been their extreme western outpost. In the Midlands and the North they held Mountsorel and most of the castles of Yorkshire. Between these northern fortresses and London, however, lay a tract of hostile country. The Thames Valley was blocked by Windsor and Oxford; two of John’s foreign followers, Engelard d’Athée (or de Cigogné) and Andrew de Chanceaux, were in command of Windsor; while the castles of Oxford, Buckingham, Hertford, Bedford, Cambridge, and Northampton, and the whole of the six shires in which they stood, were under the charge of the most devoted and energetic, as well as the most ruthless, of John’s soldiers from over sea, Falkes de Bréauté. Beyond these lay Nottingham, Newark, Sleaford, and Lincoln, whose castles were all in the possession of the royalists.[80] To the east, though the Earls of Essex and Norfolk were among the partisans of Louis, the castles of Pleshy, Colchester, Norwich, and Orford were garrisoned by the troops of the King.[81] In the far north Newcastle-on-Tyne was held for Henry by Hugh de Baliol,[82] and the fortresses of the see of Durham by the constables of the Palatine bishop. The western shires were entirely in the hands of the Royalists. On the Dorset coast Peter de Maulay, to whom John on the eve of his last campaign had entrusted his second boy, Richard, was in command of Corfe, a fortress which on account of its remote position and great strength had been chosen for the depository of the greater part of the royal treasure.[83] The French had apparently no hold upon the coast anywhere except at Southampton and Porchester, and at Rye, where the castle was held for Louis by Geoffrey de Say.[84] Some of the Cinque Ports had indeed submitted to Louis in 1215, but they had almost immediately thrown off his yoke, resumed their allegiance to John, and joined hands with a motley band of adventurers and country folk who under the leadership of William de Casinghem occupied the Weald of Kent and were a perpetual danger to the French troops engaged in the siege of Dover.