All this was a practical defiance of Louis. But to set Louis at defiance without endeavouring to secure the adherence, or at any rate the neutrality, of La Marche and Angoulême would have been simply to court defeat. Two days before the King’s truce with Hugh expired, therefore, two of the places in dispute between Hugh and the King--the city of Saintes and the castle of Merpins--with the town of Cognac and the castle of Belmont, were committed to Hugh to hold “till the King’s coming of age,” “as he held them on the Saturday before the feast of S. Peter in Chains” in the preceding year; two envoys (of whom one was Geoffrey de Neville) were despatched to take security from him “for his good and faithful service, and that he would faithfully do his utmost to advance the King’s interest and procure his honour till the term before mentioned”;[865] and on 4th August the holder of the papal mandate for Hugh’s excommunication was desired to deal with it only as the same two envoys should direct.[866] Contrary winds detained Archbishop Stephen and his fellow-ambassadors in England[867] for more than a week. When they reached the French court, Louis was already crowned.[868] He seems to have declined to make any immediate answer to their demands, and adjourned the matter to the octave of All Saints.[869] The delay was probably not unwelcome to Henry’s counsellors, who at that moment had their hands full with a Welsh war. The pacification at Shrewsbury in July, 1221, seems to have been followed by an unusually long period of comparative tranquillity on the Marches of Wales. It was probably this condition of affairs which, when it had lasted for sixteen months, encouraged the King’s representatives to venture on what looks like a very bold step in the prosecution of their schemes for asserting the royal authority over the castles. On 11th November, 1222, the Earl Marshal was informed by letter patent that “as the castle of Caerleon with its appurtenances, which is in your hand, ought to be held of us in chief, it is provided by our common council that that castle shall be delivered into our hand; and therefore we strictly command that you, without delay or excuse, surrender that castle with its appurtenances to us, and afterwards we will cause full justice to be done in our court to you and to any others who may have aught to say about it.”[870] For this demand it is hardly possible to conceive any motive save one: a desire to obtain from the Marshal, by way of example and precedent, a practical acknowledgement of the King’s right to take into his own hands, when he pleased, a castle held of the Crown not merely in custody, but in fee. If, however, this was the purpose the Council had in view, they were ill-advised in their choice of a time for making the demand; the Marshal, if not already in Ireland, was on the point of setting out to spend the winter there.[871] Possibly the King’s letter