on the Isle of Ely and recovered possession of it for the King.[130] The royal forces were swelling fast; “converts”--as the rebels who returned to allegiance are called in the official records--came crowding in;[131] and after Easter the Marshal, while still blockading the “tower” of Winchester, felt himself strong enough to despatch the Earls of Chester, Aumale, and Ferrers, with Robert de Vipont, Brian de Lisle, William de Cantelupe, and Falkes, and a number of knights and men-at-arms drawn from the garrisons of the evacuated royal castles, to form the siege of the rebel Earl of Winchester’s great fortress of Mountsorel in Leicestershire.[132] Tidings of these things reached Louis in France; “and when he heard them,” says a contemporary, “he was not at all glad.” About Easter time he had betaken himself to Calais, but with only a very small following; if he had gone to France with the hope of gathering forces there, he must have been disappointed. He had, however, procured a new machine called a trebuchet, “about which there was much talk, for at that time few of them had been seen in France.” With this machine, and a handful of knights--only one hundred and forty--he at last set sail[133] for England once more on Saturday, 22nd April.[134] As the French ships drew near to Dover on the morning of S. George’s day {_Sunday, 23 April_}, their occupants saw the huts which had been built to shelter the besiegers of the castle still standing, empty but intact. At that very moment, however, King John’s son Oliver and Willikin of the Weald came down upon the huts and set them on fire, after slaughtering some of the few men who had been left to guard them. To attempt a landing at Dover in the face of an enemy whose numbers and position it was impossible to distinguish amid the smoke thus raised, and who could so easily pour down a murderous fire of arrows and other missiles from the cliffs, would have been to court destruction. Louis therefore altered his course and made for Sandwich. There he succeeded in landing,[135] though not without opposition from some of the local ships.[136] Next day he rode to Dover and took up his quarters in the priory. There he heard dismal reports of the losses suffered by his adherents in other parts of England; so he hurriedly arranged with the constable of the castle for a further prolongation of the local truce,[137] and returned to Sandwich. Having now been joined by the Count of Nevers with a few followers, he dismissed the inferior portion of his own forces to the ships, which he sent back to France,[138] but, as the sequel showed, with instructions to return.[139] Then, after firing the town of Sandwich in vengeance for the hostility of its mariners,[140] he moved on to Canterbury; next day (Tuesday, 25th April) he set out for Winchester. At Malling he was met by Saer de Quincy, Simon de Langton, and some others of his English partisans. On the morrow (Wednesday, 26th) he “made a long day’s march, for he went