Under his son and successor, Geoffrey II, the Frank principality prospered exceedingly. The Venetian historian, Marino Sanudo, who derived much of his information from his relative, Marco II Sanudo, Duke of Naxos, has given us a vivid picture of life at the Peloponnesian court under the rule of the second of the Villehardouins. A just prince, Geoffrey II used to send his friends from time to time to the baronial castles of the Morea to see how the barons treated their vassals. At his own court he kept “eighty knights with golden spurs”; and “knights came to the Morea from France, from Burgundy, and above all from Champagne, to follow him. Some came to amuse themselves, others to pay their debts, others again because of crimes which they had committed[50].” In fact, towards the middle of the thirteenth century, the Morea had become for the younger sons of the French chivalry much what the British colonies were to adventurers and ne’er-do-weels fifty years ago. It was a place where the French knights would find their own language spoken—we are specially told what good French was spoken in Greece in the Frankish period—and could scarcely fail to obtain congenial employment from a prince of their own race. One difficulty, however, had soon arisen in the Frank principality. The Latin clergy, who had had their full share of the spoils, declined to take any part in the defence of the country. Geoffrey, with all the energy of his race, opposed a stout resistance to these clerical pretensions, and confiscated the ecclesiastical fiefs, spending the proceeds upon the erection of the great castle of Clermont or Chlomoutsi above the busy port of Glarentza, the imposing ruins of which are still a land-mark for miles around. When he had finished the castle Geoffroy appealed to the Pope, placing before the Holy Father the very practical argument that, if the principality, through lack of defenders, were recaptured by the Greeks, the loss would fall just as much on the Roman Church as on the prince, while the fault would be entirely with the former. The Pope was sufficiently shrewd to see that Geoffroy was right; the dispute was settled amicably; and both the prince and the Latin clergy subscribed generously for the preservation of the moribund Latin empire, which exercised a nominal suzerainty over the principality of Achaia.