This was a very cunning answer, for by professing to be so ready to surrender at the command of the Bishop that prelate was precluded from proceeding to their instant excommunication which he would have done. That would have caused at least half of their men, if not a greater proportion, to fall away from them, for there was a sufficiency of piety left in the North parts. Moreover, as against that answer, the Bishop was advised that he could not, as he would willingly have done, send his own forces with the Young Lovell against the Castle. For it was true enough that, until the Young Lovell could appeal against that judgment of the Lord Percy’s, those false knights held a certain part of his lands in the interests of the King, so that the Prince Bishop could not well war upon them. As for the Young Lovell’s deeds and charters they were hidden up by the Knight of Haltwhistle in his tower at that place, so that, for the moment, he could by no means come at them and it was difficult for the Bishop’s advisers to say how he might have them again. For they had not even any certain evidence that those muniments were at Haltwhistle. The Young Lovell had the news of Elizabeth Campstones, his old nurse, and she was a prisoner in the Castle. It was true that the lawyer Stone had by that time come round to the side of the Young Lovell, and he was assured that those charters and deeds had been removed to the tower at Haltwhistle. Still he had not seen this done, for they had gone at dead of night. Therefore the Bishop wrote another letter to them of the Castle, saying he was assured that they and no others held all those deeds and summoning them immediately to surrender. To this the Decies answered that he had not those deeds and papers: that they were very certainly not in that fortress as far as he commanded it: that he would very willingly surrender them, but he did not know where they were. He imagined that they might be in the White Tower over which he had no control. The lawyer Stone said that that might very well be the truth that was in the Decies’ mind. For that ignorant fool was mostly heavy with wine. The evil Knight of Wallhouses had counselled the others that they should make the Decies commander in name of that Castle at the very first, so that if any penalties should fall on any heads for the seizure it should be on the Decies’. Moreover, they had removed the muniments without telling the Decies, so that they might the more easily be rid of him when it served their turn.