privately, the archbishop enjoined on them a three-days’ fast with alms, and thereafter solemnly gave them absolution and God’s and his own blessing, and though by reason of great infirmity and the weakness of old age he was carried in a litter wherever he was needed, yet to arouse their courage he determined to go with them. But they forced him to remain, beseeching him to be content to intercede for them by prayer and alms, watching and fasting and by other godly works; they would gladly fight the enemy for God’s church and for His minister, as He should deign to help them, and as their order demanded. Thereupon he delivered to them his cross and the banner of St. Peter and his own men; and they went to the town of Thirsk. Thence they sent Robert de Brus and Bernard de Balliol to the king of Scotland, who was now wasting the land of St. Cuthbert, as was said above; they begged him, with the greatest deference and friendliness, to desist thenceforth from his cruel measures, and promise faithfully to ask the king of England to confer on Henry, son of the king of Scotland, the county of Northumberland, which that king had demanded. But he and his men hardened their hearts, rejected their overtures, and treated them with scornful contempt. So Robert abjured the homage he had done to him, and Bernard the fealty which he had once sworn, when captured by him, and both returned to their fellows. Thereupon all the chief men of that county, and William Peverel and Geoffrey Halsalin from Nottinghamshire, and Robert de Ferers from Derbyshire, and other weighty and wise men, bound and fortified themselves in turn with oaths, that none of them would desert the others in this business, so long as they could each render mutual aid, and so all would either die or conquer together. At the same time the archbishop sent to them Ralph Novellus, bishop of Orkney, with one of his own archdeacons and other clerks, who in his stead should enjoin penance and give absolution to the bands of people daily flocking thither from all quarters. He also sent to them the priests with their parishioners, as he had promised them.