or great force of character; but he did prove to possess a will of his own, though it was too often a fitful and a wayward will--precisely the kind of will which may be only too easily influenced, but never entirely directed or controlled, by another person. If Henry’s will, at the opening of his seventeenth year and in the first flush of his newly acquired regal independence, had been so utterly dormant as to move only at Hubert’s impulsion, he would indeed have been a marvellously degenerate descendant of his Angevin and Norman ancestors. For such an unnatural supposition there is no ground whatever. There is every reason to believe that from December, 1223, onwards Henry, within the limits defined in October, and with the assistance of his Council, although relying mainly on the advice of one member of it, actually governed as well as reigned. On the breaking up of the council in London the Earl of Chester and his party went to Northampton to concert their plans and muster their forces pending the expiration of the “truce” at the octave of S. Hilary. They removed to Leicester on hearing that the King was coming to hold his Christmas court at Northampton.[941] Sumptuous preparations were made for the festival; the majority of the magnates, as well as the Primate and other bishops, rallied round the King, and there came together “so many earls and barons and knights in arms that neither in the days of the King’s father, nor since, was such a festival remembered to have been celebrated in England.”[942] On the day after Christmas {26 Dec.} the Archbishop and his suffragans put on their albs, lighted their candles, and excommunicated all “disturbers of the King, the realm, and the Church, and invaders of ecclesiastical property.”[943] Stephen then sent a message to the discontented barons at Leicester, bidding them come to speak with the King, and warning them that a refusal would place them within the scope of the excommunication just published {26–28 Dec.}. Alarmed by this threat, and conscious of the inferiority of their forces, they obeyed the summons.[944] They were brought into the presence of the King, the Primate, and some of the bishops, and the Pope’s order for the restitution of the King’s property was exhibited to them there. Then the King himself called upon them all to obey it by immediately surrendering the castles and other wardenships which they held for him. For a while they hesitated whether to yield or appeal to the Pope; but another word of warning from the Archbishop decided them, and they agreed to do what was required of them, on condition that the Justiciar and all other holders of royal property should at once do likewise. Stephen answered eagerly, “It is meet that there be such a distribution of castles as shall make all parties equal without scandal.”[945] On this a universal surrender was made in legal form by the delivery of a glove or a hat from every individual both of Chester’s party and of