Throughout the autumn and winter of 1233–4 England was plunged into turmoil; the most serious civil disturbance since the baronial rebellion of John's reign and, like that earlier war, blamed by many on the ambitions and policies of Peter des Roches. Nonetheless, it is important not to exaggerate the extent of the war of 1233–4. The rebellion against John had involved a substantial proportion of the higher aristocracy and baronage; London was lost to the king for more than two years, during which time royal authority extended over no more than a handful of garrisons and the counties of the far south–west. There was to be nothing comparable to this in 1233. In the 1230s, rebel activity concentrated on the southern Welsh Marches and led to the temporary seizure of less than half a dozen of the king's castles. England suffered a series of skirmishes at the hands of rebel raiding parties, but although these attacks were daring, and served to humiliate the various courtiers whose manors were pillaged, they in no sense constituted a campaign of military conquest and laid siege to not a single castle outside the Marches. Above all, despite the sympathy evinced for the rebels by leading barons and churchmen, rebellion itself was limited to a handful of men, never more than fifty or sixty of knightly status, most of them personal adherents of Richard Marshal, the one magnate openly to make war upon the king.