The King, to preserve the obedience of the nobles, demanded their children to be kept as hostages. One of those to whom the order came was William de Braose, Lord of Bramber, in Sussex, and of a wide district in Ireland. Herds of the wild white cattle with red ears roamed about his estate, and his wife is said to have boasted that she could victual a besieged castle for a month with her cheeses, and yet have some to spare. When John’s squire, Pierre de Maulac, the hated governor of Corfe, who was accused of having aided in the murder of Arthur, came to demand her children, the high-spirited lady answered that the King had not taken such care of his own nephew as to make her entrust her son to his keeping. Her husband was alarmed for the consequences of her bold speech, sent four hundred of the oxen as a present to the Queen, and fled with his wife to Ireland; but in his absence, two years after, John made a progress thither, seized upon her and her children, and sent them back to Corfe, where Maulac, by his orders, starved them all to death in the dungeons. The eldest son escaped, being with his father in France, where the unhappy Lord of Bramber died of grief on hearing of their horrible fate, the most barbarous action which has ever stained the pages of English history. Innocent now put forth a bull addressed to the King of France, saying that the prelates of Canterbury, London, and Ely, having declared to him the cruel persecution of the English Church, he had, in presence of his cardinals, solemnly deposed King John; and in order that a greater and more noble prince might be summoned to the throne, he granted it to Philippe Auguste, assuring him that all his efforts to conquer it should be reckoned for the remission of his sins, and that he might transmit his conquests to his descendants. He wrote other letters, desiring the French nobles to second their King in their enterprise; and there were many English who, grieved by the censures of the Church, and suffering personal injuries from their tyrant, were ready to seek aid in a new dynasty. Walter Hubert’s doctrine of the most worthy was an unfortunate one for such a king as John, and he began to reap the fruits of it when placed in comparison with Louis the Lion, whom, by the marriage with his niece, Blanche of Castille, he had placed next in succession to his own infant children.