they might well have goaded even a man of cooler temper than Falkes to play into his enemies’ hands by committing some outrage which would furnish the government with an occasion for crushing him completely; and to crush him the King and his councillors were evidently already determined, before that outrage was committed. The abstract justice and wisdom of their determination need not be discussed here. As a matter of policy, however, the time for its execution was singularly ill chosen. The moment when a swarm of locusts was known to be on the point of advancing upon Poitou was not the moment for stirring up a hornet’s nest in England. The King paid dearly for his own share--whatever it may have been--in this blunder. Some share in it, and in all likelihood the larger share, must have belonged to Hubert; and for Hubert only one possible excuse can be suggested. As he seems to have underrated the dangers over sea, so he may, at the outset, have underrated the difficulty of the task upon which he was entering in England.[1071] The muster at Northampton may have been designed for a mere military demonstration, in the heart of the lands which had been so long under Falkes’s charge, with the expectation that Falkes would be thereby overawed into making complete submission, somewhat as Count William of Aumale had been overawed in 1220 and 1221, and that the host might, when it had accomplished this preliminary purpose, proceed to the south coast and still reach Poitou before it was too late. Such an expectation would hardly be consistent with the knowledge which Hubert must have possessed of the character and the resources of Falkes. If it was still entertained by any one when in the dawn of 20th June the host set out for Bedford, a very brief experience there must have sufficed to shew that it was utterly hopeless.