At the opening of Henry’s reign the native element in Wales was very distinctly in the ascendent. The old superiority, or primacy, of Gwynedd had once more become a living thing. Llywelyn ap Iorwerth had been for more than twenty years {1194–1216} extending his power over the southern and eastern principalities. He had in 1206 accepted the hand of John’s elder daughter Joan—the child, seemingly, of John’s early dissolved marriage with Isabel of Gloucester[434]—but throughout the civil war his sympathies were openly and actively with John’s enemies. In 1215 he “and the Welsh princes in general” attacked Caermarthen and destroyed the castle, and also took and destroyed most of the other castles in South Wales.[435] On the other hand, his chief rival, Gwenwynwyn, the prince of southern Powys, offered his service to John; whereupon Llywelyn, with “most of the princes,” marched into Powys and “took possession of Gwenwynwyn’s whole territory to himself” in 1216.[436] At the close of 1215 the Bishop of Hereford had died.[437] He was Giles de Breuse, the head of a family whose patrimony—comprising Radnor, Brecon, and Abergavenny in Wales, besides Totnes and Barnstaple in Devonshire and Bramber in Sussex—had been forfeited to the Crown in 1210 under circumstances which made it well-nigh impossible that confidence should ever be restored between the house of Breuse and King John. Giles had indeed, only a few weeks before his death, fined with the King for restitution of all the lands which had been his father’s;[438] but his next brother, Reginald, on succeeding to his hereditary claims, set himself to prosecute them by making common cause with the King’s enemies in Wales. Llywelyn was now at the height of his triumph, not only in Powys, but also in Deheubarth; in 1216, at Aberdovey, in his presence and obviously under his dictation, South Wales was portioned out between the four rival representatives of its sovereign house, Maelgwn and Rhys “the Hoarse” and their nephews “Young Rhys” and Owen.[439] These latter were cousins to Reginald de Breuse.[440] With Llywelyn Reginald formed a closer connexion by taking one of his daughters to wife.[441] In August, 1216, John visited the Welsh border and sought to win the support of some of the princes, and also of Reginald de Breuse, but it “did not avail him anything.”[442] Evidently they all saw in John’s extremity, and after his death in his successor’s youth and helplessness, their long-desired opportunity for revenge; and we can hardly doubt that it was a combination of Welshmen and followers of Reginald de Breuse who attacked Goodrich on the eve of Henry’s coronation. Gualo’s interdict published a fortnight later shows how clearly it was understood that Wales as a whole “held with the barons.”

Early in 12171217 the Earl Marshal wrote in the young King’s name to Reginald de Breuse, urging him to return to his allegiance and promising that if he did so, the whole of his patrimony should be restored to him.[443] Reginald however continued obstinate till the Royalist victory at Lincoln. Then he, like many others, seems to have realized that the tide had turned, and that it was time for him to turn likewise. Before Midsummer he had submitted, and he was soon reinstated in the Irish and English possessions of his father.[444] His Welsh kinsfolk promptly punished his desertion of their party; Rhys and Owen wrested from him “the whole of Builth except the castles”; Llywelyn marched upon Brecknock. Reginald however succeeded in patching up some kind of peace with his father-in-law, who thereupon turned his arms against the Flemings of Pembrokeshire, and compelled {Sept.} them all to promise him tribute and submission.[445]

To Llywelyn, as to King Alexander, the treaty of Kingston was duly notified by Louis.[446] The new Bishop of Hereford and the Bishop of Coventry were, it seems, empowered by the Legate to receive the submission of all the Welsh princes and absolve them from excommunication at Hereford on 18th November; when this was done, Hugh de Mortimer[447] and some other barons were to escort them to Northampton for a meeting with the King.[448] Henry and the Marshal were at Northampton on 17th and 18th December;[449] but evidently the Welsh princes did not come. It may have been to keep guard on the Welsh border that the Marshal took his young sovereign to keep Christmas at Gloucester,[450] and lingered with him in the west of England throughout the first four months of the new year {1218}. In February, 1218, a safe-conduct was issued to Llywelyn that he might come and do homage to the King at Worcester.[451] No date is fixed in the letter, and no record of the homage appears to exist; but there can be no doubt that it was performed at the appointed place on or before 17th March, for on that day, at Worcester, the castles of Cardigan and Caermarthen with the lands appertaining to them were committed by the King and his council to his “beloved brother-in-law Llywelyn, Prince of North Wales,” that he might hold them till the King’s coming of age, maintaining them out of their own revenues, and administering justice within their territories in the King’s name.[452]

Two days before, a safe-conduct had been issued to all the magnates of both North and South Wales to come and do homage at Worcester at the close of Easter (22nd April).[453] It does not appear whether any of them came, except Llywelyn, who seems to have come for a special purpose. Morgan, the lord of Caerleon-upon-Usk, had taken no notice of repeated admonitions from Louis to observe the treaty of Kingston, and had deliberately broken truce by slaying in one day no less than ten Anglo-Normans of gentle birth, and also burning twenty-two churches.[454] The Marshal had put an effectual stop to such proceedings on Morgan’s part; he “fought against Caerleon and took it”[455]—that is, according to his own biographer, his bailiff “called up his men and his friends and besieged Caerleon, and it was taken.” At the “parliament” at Worcester Llywelyn asked that Morgan should, like the other allies of Louis, be formally reinstated in the right to hold his land “according to the terms of the treaty,” that is, as he had held it before the war. The regent, acting on the advice of “his council”—defined as “all those who were in fealty to him”[456]—refused, on the ground of Morgan’s flagrant infraction of the peace; and the “parliament” adjudged Caerleon and its appurtenances to its conqueror.[457] The general homage of Welsh magnates seems to have been postponed from the close of Easter to the morrow of Ascension day, 25th May.[458] On that or the following day, at Woodstock,[459] it at last took place, so far at least as concerned Deheubarth; the Welsh chronicles themselves tell us that “young Rhys went himself, and all the princes, by the advice of Llywelyn, to the court of the king, from South Wales, to do him homage.”[460]

The homage of King Ragnald “of the Isles”—that is, the Isle of Man and the Orkneys—took longer to win, probably because he was geographically more difficult to reach. On 16th January, 1218, he was summoned to come over and do homage “and make amends for the excesses committed by his men against King Henry’s men, both in England and in Ireland,” and a safe-conduct was given him, to last till 30th April,[461] but he did not come; on 1st May another safe-conduct was issued to him, till 1st August,[462] again with no result; and it was not till September, 1219, that he actually came.[463] Neither his personal contumacy nor the piratical “excesses” of his seafaring subjects, however, constituted a real danger to the peace of the realm.

In the Irish dominions of the English Crown the first trouble that arose under the new reign came neither from the barons nor from the people, but from the Justiciar. Geoffrey de Marsh, who had held that office in Ireland since 1215, no sooner heard of the death of King John {1216} than he despatched to Henry, or to his guardians, letters in which he assured his young sovereign of his fidelity, and asked for instructions how to act for the furtherance of his interests in Ireland. He seems to have suggested that the Queen-mother, or the heir-presumptive, little Richard, should be sent thither to represent the Crown.[464] The Marshal sent him in reply a letter in the King’s name, informing him of the coronation and the proceedings of the council of Bristol, and requesting him to receive for Henry the homage of the magnates and the King’s other subjects in Ireland; also promising to send them in return a confirmation of the same liberties which had just been granted to their fellow-subjects in England. The suggestion about the Queen and Richard was politely waived with an assurance that it should be duly considered. Geoffrey was warmly thanked for his past and present loyalty, and entreated to redouble his efforts in behalf of a King whose tender years made him the more in need of his liegemen’s counsel and aid.[465] On 6th February, 1217,1217 a copy of the Charter was sent to Ireland with a letter in the King’s name addressed to all the King’s faithful subjects in Ireland, expressing his desire that as a reward for their fidelity to his father and a motive for its continuance towards himself they and their heirs for ever should, of his grace and gift, enjoy the same liberties which his father and he had granted to the realm of England.[466] The Marshal’s policy was to bind the English March in Ireland as closely as possible to the Crown; he had already issued letters patent forbidding the election of Irishmen to cathedral dignities within the King’s land in Ireland, “because by such elections the peace of that land has frequently been disturbed,” and commanding that when such dignities fell vacant, clerks of the King and other “honest Englishmen useful to us” (the King) “and our realm” should be elected and promoted thereto by the joint counsel of the Archbishop of Dublin and the Justiciar.[467] The Archbishop of Dublin, Henry of London, was at that time in England; but on 16th April, “although,” writes the King to the barons in Ireland, “we feel his presence here is most necessary to us and our realm, and we can hardly do without his counsel,” he was sent to “visit and console” his diocese, and also expressly to assist the Justiciar with his counsel and support in ordering and amending the condition of the King’s Irish territory; while the Justiciar was bidden to “acquiesce in all things” in the counsel of the Archbishop, and to be guided by it in his expenditure of the money received at the Dublin Exchequer, “forasmuch as the King wills that nothing be done without his assent.”[468]

The position of the Justiciar of the Irish March at this time was very much more independent than that of the Chief Justiciar of England. The Justiciar in Ireland seems to have practically had the entire control of the whole machinery of government, administration, and finance, throughout the King’s Irish domains. The revenues due to the Crown, whether derived from demesne lands, or from taxes, or tolls, or from the proceeds of escheats, fines, wardships, reliefs, and the like, seem to have all passed through his hands. The fixed revenue of the Crown lands was assigned to him for the necessary expenses of government and for maintaining the defence of the land and the garrisons of the royal castles, and in remuneration of his own services; the residue he was supposed to pay into the Exchequer in Dublin, for transmission to the King when required. Moreover, it seems to have been he who appointed the wardens of the King’s castles throughout the March.[469] Such a system offered facilities for almost unlimited embezzlement on the part of a dishonest Justiciar, or mismanagement and waste on the part of an incompetent one; while it left to the English government scarcely any means of proving a charge of either dishonesty or incompetence against an officer at once so remote and invested with so much independent authority. It seems clear that the reports, and the results, of Geoffrey’s financial administration which reached England were not satisfactory to the regent, and that the Archbishop of Dublin was really sent not so much to “assist” the Justiciar as to hold him in check and keep a watch on his proceedings. Eight months later Geoffrey had to be reprimanded[470] for not having yet executed a royal order issued on Midsummer day for the restoration of Limerick to Reginald de Breuse[471]; and on 12th February, 1218,1218 a long letter of remonstrance was written to him in the King’s name. He had been bidden to come over and do his homage, and certify the King as to the state of the Crown’s Irish lands; the King is “greatly surprised” that he has not yet come, and again bids him come without fail before Easter next, and bring with him all the money that the King’s subjects and bailiffs in Ireland can be induced to furnish, for the payment of the debt to Louis, and of six hundred marks owed to the Pope, being two years’ arrears of the tribute due to him from Ireland.[472] Whether Geoffrey sent any money does not appear; he certainly did not come over in person; probably, however, he made some excuse which gave the Marshal no grounds for questioning his loyalty, for his homage was left in abeyance till after the Marshal’s death.

In England itself every effort was made by the government to carry out loyally the terms of the treaty of Kingston and the provisions of the Charter. On 22nd February the two Charters—the Charter of Liberties and that of the Forest—were sent certainly to one, probably to all of the sheriffs, with instructions to publish them in the shire-courts, and to make all the men of the shire swear to the observance of them, as well as to take an oath of fealty to the King; especial stress was laid on the execution of the last clause in the Charter of Liberties, which enjoined the destruction of adulterine castles.[473] In July the chief Justiciar of the Forest, John Marshal, the regent’s nephew, was despatched on a Forest circuit to make arrangements for deafforestations to be carried out according to the Forest Charter.[474] Such of the prisoners taken during the war, and of their captors, as were dissatisfied with regard to questions of ransom were by public proclamation, made through the sheriffs each in his shire, invited or summoned to shew their complaints on 6th May before the King’s council at Westminster, for the settlement of their respective claims and the composing of their mutual differences.[475]

As a chronicler says, “it was difficult speedily to satisfy the desires of all men, and to allay in a moment the rancour of so many dissidents”; and it was also, after the turmoil of the last few years, difficult for men of the fighting classes to settle down to a life of peace. Some of them “found an outlet for the relics of discord” in tournaments.[476] The real war was no sooner ended {1217} than Englishmen became possessed by a rage for these military exercises, which until the time of King Richard had never been permitted in England, and were everywhere and always discountenanced by the Church. Their revival at a moment when the embers of war were still smouldering was obviously a matter of grave peril, requiring to be dealt with promptly and firmly. It was a curious turn of fate that compelled the Earl Marshal, who had spent his youth and acquired his knightly repute in the lists of France and Flanders, to use his power for the suppression of this mimic warfare in his native land; and the first letter patent in which a tournament was forbidden by him—on 4th October, 1217, little more than a week after the departure of Louis—reveals with characteristic simplicity his reluctance to commit his young sovereign to a condemnation of tournaments in general; “Know ye,” the King is made to say, “that we will and ordain that this tournament be not held, for no other reason than this, that we fear a disturbance of our realm; which may God avert.”[477] Ten months later the young King’s uncle, Earl William of Salisbury, was forbidden to hold a tournament for which he was making preparations at Northampton, “till by God’s help and the counsel of our faithful men, and of yourself” (Salisbury), “the state of peace in our realm shall be made firmer and more secure.”[478] Similar prohibitions occur again and again;[479] but they were ineffectual, by 1220 the condemned practice had become so general that, according to one monastic chronicler, “tourneyers, their aiders and abettors, and those who carried merchandise or victuals to tournaments were ordered to be all together excommunicated every Sunday.”[480]

Other restless spirits seem to have found occupation in persecuting the Jews. In March, 1218, the Jews of Gloucester, Lincoln, Oxford, and Bristol were placed under the special charge of twenty-four citizens in each city, whose names were to be enrolled, and who were to guard the Jews against molestation from any one, “especially from Crusaders”;[481] and it was probably to facilitate the duties of these guardians, by rendering the persons under their charge distinguishable at a glance, that the Jews were all ordered to wear, when out of doors, two white “tablets” of linen or parchment on the front of their upper garment.[482] These ordinances were no doubt called forth by some unrecorded outrages whose origin we may, from the words about “Crusaders,” gather to have been closely connected with a matter which was now beginning to engage more worthily the militant spirits of the time. In November, 1215, a General Council assembled at Rome under Innocent III had decreed a new Crusade, in response to an appeal for succour which the King of the Latins in Holy Land, John de Brienne, had made three years before. Some English barons and knights had taken the Cross, but they had been too much occupied with the troubles in their own land to attempt the fulfilment of their vow till the civil war was ended. Whenever and wherever a Crusade was preached, the ruder and more ignorant among the votaries of the Cross, in their impatience to attack its enemies, were too apt to begin with those who were nearest at hand, and who were also most unpopular on other grounds than religious ones—the Jews. It is, however, highly probable that the general peace of the realm was the more easily preserved during the next year or two because several of the leading barons of both parties in the civil war now took themselves out of the country altogether, and went to sink their differences, for a while at least, in the common cause of Christendom against Islam. The first of the magnates who actually set out, it seems, were two steady loyalists, the Earls of Chester and Ferrers, who with Brian de Lisle, John de Lacy the constable of Chester, William de Harcourt, “and many others,” started at the end of May or beginning of June 1218.[483] Within a few months the Earl of Arundel,[484] Baldwin de Vere, Geoffrey de Lucy, Odonel the son of William d’Aubigny,[485] and the king’s half-brother Oliver,[486] all took the Cross, and so did two of the leaders of the other party—Robert FitzWalter and Saer de Quincy, Earl of Winchester.[487] Saer died {1219} in Holy Land,[488] and so did Baldwin de Vere; Robert FitzWalter came home in broken health,[489] and seems thenceforth to have withdrawn from public life.

Still there remained men of both parties whom it was hard to bring or keep under control. Throughout Henry’s minority his guardians found themselves at intervals in difficulties with certain men who “presumed to keep in their hands, contrary to the King’s prohibition and the will of the owners, castles and lands belonging to some of the bishops and magnates”[490]—and, the chronicler might have added, to the King himself. The earliest case of flagrant insubordination in this respect was that of Robert de Gouy. In 1215 Bishop Hugh of Lincoln had delivered to King John the castles belonging to his see, to be garrisoned for and by the King during his struggle with the rebel barons. One of these castles, Newark, was given in charge by John to Robert de Gouy, on condition of an oath sworn by Robert that in case of John’s death he would surrender the place to no one save the bishop.[491] Two months later John died in that very castle. On 10th June, 1217, Robert was by letters patent ordered to deliver Newark to its rightful owner.[492] It seems to have been anticipated that he might plead his oath to John as binding him to surrender the place only to the bishop in person; Henry de Coleville, a knight holding land under the see of Lincoln, was sent by the bishop to Newark, accredited by letters under the bishop’s seal authorizing him to receive the castle in the bishop’s stead, and also carrying letters from the Legate certifying that he, Gualo, was responsible for the bishop’s detention in London on business of state. Robert, however, refused to deliver Newark to Henry de Coleville, partly, it seems, on the ground of his oath, partly on the plea that the Crown owed him some money. On 23rd June the Council in the King’s name promised that if this latter plea should prove to be just, Robert’s claims should be satisfied, provided that he delivered Newark to Coleville without further delay.[493] This second summons had to be followed up by a third, on 23rd July, insisting that Robert should either at once obey, or come before the King’s Court at Oxford on 5th August, to hear and do what the Council should determine.[494] The Council’s decision appears to have simply confirmed the mandate of 23rd June; on 13th August De Gouy is told that he has made himself liable to a very severe sentence by his contempt of the judgement of the King’s Court in still retaining Newark, but, in consideration of his long service to the late King and the present one, his claim shall be satisfied if he will without fail come and stand to the judgement of the King’s Court concerning the castle on 31st August at Oxford.[495] It was, however, not till 26th October that Robert made a formal surrender of Newark into the hands of the King himself, for the Bishop of Lincoln, and took an oath that within forty days he would clear the place of himself and his men and deliver it bodily to the bishop in person or to whomsoever the bishop should delegate for that purpose; and also that in the meantime he would do no harm or damage to any of the bishop’s men, lands, or goods. The constables of Lincoln and Nottingham (the two nearest royal castles) were bidden to enforce full amends for any infraction of this last promise;[496] a detail which seems to imply that Robert was suspected of being actuated by personal ill-will towards the bishop. Three months passed {1218}, and Newark was still occupied by Robert and his men. Then, on 27th January, 1218, the temporalities of the see of Lincoln were committed—having apparently been placed in the King’s hand by the bishop specially to that intent—to two laymen, and the constables of its castles, Banbury, Sleaford, and Newark, were ordered to resign their respective charges to the new custodians.[497] Again Robert de Gouy disobeyed the royal order; and on 14th March the sheriff of Nottingham (Philip Marc) was bidden to join the Bishop of Lincoln in driving him out of Newark by force.[498] Either their joint attempt failed, or the bishop shrank from this extreme measure; at last, on 4th July, the Earl Marshal took upon himself to subdue the obstinate rebel, and summoned thirty miners from Gloucestershire to meet him at Stamford, where the royal forces were to muster for the siege of Newark.[499] He and the King left London on July 8th; on the 20th they reached Newark, and next day they wrote to the mayor of Lincoln for materials needed for the siege.[500] The Marshal apparently saw no occasion for superintending its conduct in person; on the 23rd he and the King withdrew to Leicester, and by the 26th they were in Oxfordshire.[501] Probably before they left Newark their military demonstration had done its work in frightening Robert sufficiently to make him offer terms, not indeed to the government, but to the Bishop of Lincoln. Some friends of Robert’s made overtures of peace to Hugh; Hugh agreed to pay Robert a hundred pounds for the provisions in the castle, and Robert apparently evacuated it forthwith.[502] On 27th July he made formal surrender of it into the hand of the King in person, at Wallingford, and the King committed it to the custody of the Bishop of Winchester, who was to do with it whatever the Legate should direct.[503] No doubt it was restored to the Bishop of Lincoln. Robert de Gouy was struck dead by lightning at S. Neot’s before the year was out.[504]

As the second year of little Henry’s reign drew to a close, his guardians seem to have felt it time to make arrangements for securing that the validity of acts done and orders issued in his name should no longer be dependent on any individual, even though that individual were the Governor of King and Kingdom or the Legate. It is probable that a change in the legation was known to be impending,[505] and also that the physical strength of the aged Marshal was beginning to give way under the strain of his great labours and responsibilities, when the making of a new royal seal was entrusted to a goldsmith named Walter “of the Hithe.” The seal was of silver, of the weight of five marks.[506] It was first used on 3rd or 4th November, 1218, to authenticate an ordinance specially designed to guard against a possible misuse of it during the King’s minority. Letters patent were issued warning all men that no grant in perpetuity was to be sealed with it till the King’s coming of age, and that any such grant found thus sealed should be null and void.[507] It was probably on the same occasion that the Bishop of Winchester, the Chancellor, the Justiciar, and “the King’s common council” made oath in the Legate’s presence that they would “keep and hold the King in seisin of all the lands which were in the hand of his father, King John, on the day when war was first begun between him and his barons of England, and that nothing should be done in the way of granting or alienating any land so that it should be ceded to any man in perpetuity so long as the King was under age.”[508] The letter patent concerning the use of the seal was attested by the Legate, the Archbishops Stephen of Canterbury—who had returned from Rome in May[509]—and Walter of York, the Justiciar, and a number of other prelates and nobles.[510] Its attestation must have been almost the last of Gualo’s public acts in England. His work there was done, and well done; he wished to resign his office; and the Pope, who had other work for him elsewhere, had accepted his resignation. In the last week of November he set out on his homeward journey.[511] A few days later a new Legate came to take his place.[512]

At Candlemas, 1219, the Marshal fell sick. The court was then in London; but he seems to have been absent from it for a few days when he was taken ill, for his biographer says he “rode to London in pain.”[513] There, with his wife, he lodged in the Tower—still, despite increasing illness, attending to the duties of his office—till the middle of March, when, feeling that the end was drawing near, he sent for his son and his men and “spoke comfortable words to them, as he well knew how.” By the advice of “several who loved him heartily,” he made his will, deliberately and carefully. Then he asked his son and Henry FitzGerold to carry him to his manor of Caversham, “for he thought he could bear his sickness more easily in his own house, and if he were to die, it were better that he should be at home than elsewhere.” They carried him thither in a boat, his wife accompanying him in another boat.[514] The court seems to have immediately removed from London to Reading, probably as the most convenient place where the Council could all assemble within such a distance of Caversham as enabled them to keep in constant communication with him.[515] To the King and the Council at Reading he sent a message, asking that they would all come to speak with him; and they came. “Simply they sat around him” while he spoke to the King: “Fair sweet sir, in presence of these barons I wish to tell you that when your father died and you were crowned, it was arranged that you should be given into my charge, and so you were, that I should defend your land, which is not easy to hold. I have served you, I can truly say, loyally and to the uttermost of my power; and I would serve you yet, if it pleased God to enable me; but every one can see it is not His Will that I should abide longer in this world. Wherefore it is fitting, so please you, that our baronage choose some one who shall guard you and the realm in such a way, if he can, as to please both God and men. And may God grant you to have such a master as may be to our honour!” Up rose the Bishop of Winchester and spoke: “Hearken now! Marshal, the land was given you to hold and the realm to maintain, I grant it; but the King was given to me.” “Out upon you!” said the Marshal, “Lord Bishop, that saying is wrong; you should have held your peace. You were never concerned in this matter. The time is not very long since you and the good Earl of Chester besought me with tears that I would be guardian and master of the King and the kingdom both together; your memory is short, meseems; and the Legate was at great pains about the matter, and begged and commanded me, till from you all, together with him, I received the King and the kingdom. And when I had received the King, it was well seen and heard, I assure you, that I gave the King into your hand, for he could not go travelling about; therefore I gave him to you to take care of him.” Here, seized with sudden pain, he turned to the Legate: “Go now, and take the King with you; and to-morrow, if you please, be good enough to return. I will take counsel with my son and my people, and provide some one to undertake the business; and may God guide our counsels aright!”

Next morning he called his son, his wife, his nephew John, and his most trusted advisers, and told them his project: that the King “should be committed to God and the Pope, and to the Legate.” “For in no land are the folk of so many different minds as in England; and if I committed him to one, the others, you may be sure, would be envious.” “If the land be not defended by the Pope at the present juncture, then I know not who should defend it.” To this they all agreed. So when the King, the Legate and the great men came again, “the Marshal raised himself on his side, and called the King, and took him by the hand, and said to the Legate: ‘Sir, I have thought long and carefully about what we spoke of yesterday. I will commit my lord here into the Hand of God, and into the hand of the Pope, and into yours, you being here in the Pope’s stead.’ Then he said to the King: ‘Sir, I pray the Lord God that, if I have ever done anything that pleased Him, He may grant you to be a brave and good man; and if you should go astray in the footsteps of any evil ancestor and become like to such, then I pray God, the Son of Mary, that He give you not long life, but grant you to die at once.’ ‘Amen,’ answered the King.” Another attack of pain seems to have compelled the Marshal again hurriedly to dismiss the assembly: but he at once sent his eldest son after them, that he might formally deliver the King, “in the sight of the baronage,” to the Legate, in order that no man should be able to say this thing was done in a corner. The young Marshal fulfilled his commission; taking the King by the hand, “in the sight of all he offered him to the Legate. But the Bishop of Winchester sprang up and took the child by the head. ‘Let be, my Lord Bishop!’ said the young Marshal, ‘concern yourself not with this matter; I wish it to be seen that I fulfill all my father’s command.’” The Legate rose up to receive the King, and sternly rebuked Peter.[516]

The old Marshal, feeling, as he said “delivered from a great burden,” lingered for some weeks longer, and died on 14th May, conscious to the last, in the act of making the sign of the cross.[517] Earls, barons, bishops, abbots, joined the funeral train as it passed from Caversham to London; and with every imaginable token of honour and reverence from clerks and laymen alike, the Marshal was laid to rest, as he had desired, in the church of the Knights of the Temple; Archbishop Stephen of Canterbury taking the chief part in the burial service and paying the last honours to the man whom he too, as he stood by the open grave, declared to have been “the best knight of all the world that has lived in our time.”[518]