"It is an outrage upon all laws of chivalry and honour.
What could have induced this caitiff knight, instead of treating you with courtesy and honour until your ransom arrived, to lodge you in a foul dungeon, where, had you not made your escape, your death would have been brought about that very night by the rising water?
Could it be, think you, that his brain is distraught by some loss or injury which may have befallen him at our hands during the war and worked him up to a blind passion of hatred against all Englishmen ?" "I think not that, your Royal Highness," Walter replied.

"His manner was cool and deliberate, and altogether free from any signs of madness.
Moreover, it would seem that he had specially marked me down beforehand, since, as I have told you, he had bargained with the Count of Evreux for the possession of my person should I escape with life at the capture of the castle.

It seems rather as if he must have had some private enmity against me, although what the cause may be I cannot imagine, seeing that I have never, to my knowledge, before met him, and have only heard his name by common report.
"Whatever be the cause," the prince said, "we will have satisfaction for it, and I will beg the king, my father, to write at once to Phillip of Valois protesting against the treatment that you have received, and denouncing Sir Phillip of Holbeaut as a base and dishonoured knight, whom, should he fall into our hands, we will commit at once to the hangman." Upon the following day Walter was called before the king, and related to him in full the incidents of the siege and of his captivity and escape; and the same day King Edward sent off a letter to Phillip of Valois denouncing Sir Phillip Holbeaut as a dishonoured knight, and threatening retaliation upon the French prisoners in his hands.
A fortnight later an answer was received from the King of France saying that he had inquired into the matter, and had sent a seneschal, who had questioned Sir Phillip Holbeaut and some of the men-at-arms in the castle, and that he found that King Edward had been grossly imposed upon by a fictitious tale.

Sir Walter Somers had, he found, been treated with all knightly courtesy, and believing him to be an honourable knight and true to his word, but slight watch had been kept over him.

He had basely taken advantage of this trust, and with the man-at-arms with him had escaped from the castle in order to avoid payment of his ransom, and had now invented these gross and wicked charges against Sir Phillip Holbeaut as a cloak to his own dishonour.
Walter was furious when he heard the contents of this letter, and the king and Black Prince were no less indignant.