Moving from London on the 30th of April, the French and Anglo-Normans signalised their march northward by every kind of outrage. Never had the youths and maidens of Middlesex and Hertfordshire known a May Day associated with such painful memories. The foreign invaders and their Anglo-Norman allies, indeed, celebrated the festival in a way which raised a general shout of horror, but seemed to revel in the crimes of which they were guilty. They slew men, outraged women, plundered houses, and wantonly destroyed churches and abbeys as they went, pursued everywhere by the maledictions of the English, who vowed vengeance, and prepared the means of executing it, as if admonished by instinct that the day was not very distant.
The Count de Perche, however, pursued his march in triumph, paying no attention whatever to the curses and threats of the insulted and the injured, no matter how flagrant the insult or how deep the injury, and only eager to come up with the royalists. Pembroke, however, was well informed of all that was taking place, and acted with his wonted prudence. Knowing the impossibility of contending with so superior a force as that headed by the Count de Perche, the protector raised the siege, marched to Nottingham, and summoned the king’s adherents in all quarters to come to his support; and then removing from Nottingham to Newark-on-Trent, he calmly awaited the arrival of his friends and intelligence of his foes.
Meanwhile the Count de Perche made his way to Leicestershire, and on reaching Mount Sorrel found that Pembroke had raised the siege and gone northward. Perche and Fitzwalter, however, did not follow the foe. In fact, they resolved, without delay, to march to Lincoln, where there was still work to be done for their Lord Louis. Accordingly they marched through the vale of Belvoir, and, continuing to perpetrate every enormity as they advanced, at length reached the city which had been so long and so bravely defended by the royalists.
But in the interim Pembroke was not idle. In fact, the old warrior-statesman was every day proving himself, by his sagacity and energy, worthy of the position he occupied. His efforts were even more successful than he could have anticipated, and to the royal standard at Newark gathered chiefs of great name and high reputation. Thither came Ralph, Earl of Chester, William, Earl Ferrars, William, Earl of Salisbury, William, Earl of Arundel, and William, Earl of Albemarle; thither also, from the castles which they held for the king, came William de Cantelupe, Robert de Vipont, Brian de Lisle, Geoffrey de Lucy, and Thomas Bassett; thither, with his mercenaries, came Falco, who had almost become popular by fighting very earnestly against mercenaries ten times less scrupulous than his own; and thither came Philip de Albini and John Marshal, whose crossbowmen had done such good service on the English coast. Four hundred knights, many yeomen on horseback, and a considerable body of foot, formed the army which Pembroke headed to save England from the foreigner; and though it was much inferior, especially in cavalry, to that under the Count de Perche, the old protector did not despair of dealing with his foes in a manner satisfactory to the king and country.