A.D. U94. CONFERENCE WITH A VIEW TO PEACE. meantime, John, earl of Mortaigne, the Icing's brother, returned to the king his brother, and through the mediation of queen Eleanor, their mother, the king and he became reconciled : but the king refused to restore to him any castle or lands. As to the army of the king of France, which he had left besieging Verneuil, on seeing that their king had taken his departure, his troops followed him on Monday, in the week of Pentecost. The king of England, being full of activity, and more swift than the discharge of a Balearic sling, on hearing that the king of France was laying siege to Verneuil, hurried on to that place with all haste, and on not finding the king of France there, pursued his retreating army with the edge of the sword. The king of England then hastened to Verneuil, and fortified the parts that were most unprotected.- After so doing, the king hastened to Montmirail, to which the people of Anjou and Maine were laying siege ; but, before he arrived, they had taken it and levelled it with the ground. The king of England next hastened with aB speed to the castle of Loches, passing by the castle of Tours, where he received two thousand marks from the burgesses as a voluntary gift. The knights of Navarre, however, and the Brabanters, laid siege to the castle of Loches. The chieftain and leader of these was Aufuns, son of Sancho, king of Navarre, and brother of Berengaria, queen of England ; but he did not lead them as far as Loches, for, before he had arrived there, word was brought to him that his father, the king of Navarre, was dead ; for which reason he returned to his country, and was received as king by the people of that kingdom. On the king of England arriving before the castle of Loches, he there found the before-mentioned Navarrese and Brabanters, amid watchings, and hunger, and other hardships, labouring in vain at the capture of that castle : on which, immediately with his own men and the others who were there, making assaults upon it day and night, he at length took it by force of arms, and captured in it five knights and four-and-twenty menat-arms, on the second day of the week after the feast of Saint Barnabas the Apostle. In the meantime, messengers from the king of France ap pointed a conference with the seneschal, and constable, and nobles of Normandy, at Pont d'Arches. Accordingly, on the day appointed, Walter, archbishop of Bouen, together with the said seneschal, constable, and nobles, came to the place ap