On 4th July the King’s guardians issued from Gloucester a summons for a council to be held at Oxford on the 15th. It seems not to have actually met till a week later; and on 26th or 27th July the King and the Marshal returned to Gloucester, after issuing (22nd July) a summons for another assembly to be held at Oxford on 6th August.[252] The royal forces were increasing more and more. Two great nobles had joined them since Louis’s return to England--the Earl of Warren before 22nd June, and the Earl of Arundel before 14th July[253]--and nearly one hundred and fifty rebels submitted between the end of May and the beginning of August.[254] When the host re-assembled at Oxford[255] all was ready for the final struggle. From Oxford they moved to Reading, and thence to Farnham;[256] there, it seems, the leaders separated, the Legate and the King going northward again with one part towards London, while another part under the Earl Marshal and the justiciar made for the Kentish coast to prepare for its defence against the expected French fleet. From Dover the Marshal summoned the men of the Cinque Ports to arm and assemble their ships at Sandwich. The aged warrior was eager to go forth in person and encounter the French at sea, but his men would not suffer it; he must stay on shore, they said, “for if it chanced that he were slain or captured, who then would defend the land?”[257] On S. Bartholomew’s eve {Wed., 23 Aug.} he, with the Earl of Warren, King John’s elder son Richard,[258] Philip d’Aubigné, and a host of other “good knights,” lay encamped near Canterbury. They “slept little,” for they all knew that the morrow might prove a day almost as momentous as that of Senlac. At early dawn {24 Aug.} they marched to Sandwich. The day broke clear and bright, with a “soft and pleasant” wind which soon brought into view the armament coming from Calais.[259] It consisted of some eighty vessels of various sizes;[260] ten of them were large ships of war, fully armed,[261] of which four were filled with knights and six with men-at-arms; the smaller vessels carried accoutrements and other goods.[262] Among the knights were some of the noblest and bravest men of France;[263] those of highest rank and fame, thirty-six in number, together with the treasure which Blanche was sending to her husband, were in the ship of Eustace the Monk, who seems to have been in command of the whole fleet.[264] The vessels were making for the mouth of the Thames,[265] and as they swept round Thanet in close array as if ready for a fight, Eustace’s ship leading,[266] their number and character could be plainly distinguished by the Royalists drawn up on the shore, as well as by the sailors who manned the English ships in Sandwich harbour.[267]