The King summoned the garrison to admit him, and to surrender the castle to the Justiciar. William de Bréauté had now returned with his prisoner--if indeed they had ever really been away--but Falkes had disappeared in his turn. William and his knights refused to obey the King’s summons without instructions from Falkes, “chiefly because they were not bound by homage or fealty to the King,”[1059] and also because Falkes, having taken the Cross,[1060] was by a privilege from the Pope entitled, for himself, his lands, and his men, to exemption from molestation by the secular powers.[1061] This second plea might probably have carried some weight with the spiritual members of the King’s host, had it not been neutralized by the other. Feudal law, as understood on the side of the Channel whence Falkes and his followers had come, recognized liege homage to a mesne lord as a valid ground for disclaiming all duty to a suzerain and even a sovereign; but in England this principle had never been admitted, and was justly held to be--in the words of a modern writer--“the essence of feudal anarchy.” Disregarding an appeal to the Pope with which the garrison wound up their defiance of the King, Archbishop Stephen and the other bishops present acted upon the orders which they had received from Rome in the preceding year for dealing with refractory castellans. They lighted their candles and laid Falkes {20 June}, his liegemen in the castle, and all their aiders and abettors, under sentence of excommunication.[1062] Immediately afterwards the siege was begun.