several by Bishop Peter and his men;[219] forty-six in all are named by contemporary historians;[220] and the prisoners of knightly rank numbered three hundred,[221] besides many others of lesser degree. Those who escaped “stopped neither by night nor by day, in town or house, for they thought that on every hill-side and in every dale the bushes were all full of Marshals.”[222] Only three of the “great men” among the French--Simon of Poissy, Hugh the castellan of Arras, and Eustace de Merlinghem the constable of Boulogne--reached London with some two hundred knights. The foot-soldiers were nearly all slain by the country folk who came out “with swords and staves” to intercept their flight.[223] In the actual battle only five men had been slain; on one side the Count of Perche, two of his knights,[224] and a man-at-arms whom no one recognized; on the other, Perche’s slayer, Reginald Croc.[225] Unhappily, the English sullied their victory by sacking Lincoln. Not content with seizing the baggage and valuable goods of the French nobles and the rebel barons, which they found piled up in waggons in some of the streets, they “despoiled the whole city, even to the uttermost farthing”; and on the strength of Gualo’s exhortation to treat the canons of the cathedral chapter as excommunicate (owing to their having been throughout the war in opposition to the King), they plundered every church, breaking open chests and presses and carrying off plate, jewels, vestments, and money; the precentor of the cathedral lost eleven thousand marks. Many women fled from the city with their children and household goods, and sought to escape in boats, but through their overcrowding and ignorance of rowing all the little vessels capsized, the occupants were drowned, and the goods became the prize of anyone who fished them up from the bottom of the river.[226] All these things were done after the Marshal had left the city. As soon as the fight was over he and the other leaders held a council to consider what they should do next. Some were for marching on London, some for trying to dislodge Louis from Dover. As they could not agree, the Marshal with his usual practical good sense bade them all go home and place their respective prisoners in safety, and meet him again, with the Legate, on a day which he named, at Chertsey,[227] or, according to another account, at Oxford.[228] He then, without stopping even to eat, hurried with his tidings of victory to the King and the Legate at Nottingham. Thither, next morning {_Trinity Sunday, 21 May_}, came news of another gain to the royal cause; the garrison of Mountsorel, whose constable, Henry de Braybroke, had gone with Saer de Quincy to Lincoln, had fled and left the castle deserted.[229] The Earl of Salisbury appears to have been sent to secure it for the King; two days later {23 May} an order was issued to him from Lincoln, in the King’s name, to deliver it to Earl Ranulf of Chester,[230] who