The first of the witnesses, Earl Simon (of Northampton), is known to have been one of the three earls who adhered to the Queen during the king's captivity.[380] Richard of Boulogne was possibly a brother of her _nepos_, "Pharamus" of Boulogne, who is also known to have been with her.[381] Combining the fact of the charter being the Queen's with that of its subject-matter and that of its place of testing, we obtain the strongest possible presumption that it passed at this crisis, a presumption confirmed, as we have seen, by the name of the leading witness. The endeavour to fix the date of this charter is well worth the making. For it is not merely of interest as a record unique of its kind. If it is, indeed, of the date suggested, it is, to all appearance, the sole survivor of all those charters, such as that to Geoffrey, by which the Queen, in her hour of need, must have purchased support for the royal cause. We see her, like the queen of Henry III., like the queen of Charles I., straining every nerve to succour her husband, and to raise men and means. And as Henrietta Maria pledged her jewels as security for the loans she raised, so Matilda is here shown as pledging a portion of her ancestral "honour" to raise the sinews of war.[382] But this charter, if the date I have assigned to it be right, does more for us than this. It gives us, for an instant, a precious glimpse of that of which we know so little, and would fain know so much—I mean the government of London. We learn from it that London had then a "justiciary," and further that his name was Gervase. Nor is even this all. The Gamlingay entry in the _Testa de Nevill_ and _Liber Niger_ enables us to advance a step further and to establish the identity of this Gervase with no other than Gervase of Cornhill.[383] The importance of this identification will be shown in a special appendix.[384] Among those whom the Queen strove hard to gain was her husband's brother, the legate.[385] He had headed, as we have seen, the witnesses to Geoffrey's charter, but he was deeply injured at the failure of his appeal, on behalf of his family, to the Empress, and was even thought to have secretly encouraged the rising of the citizens of London.[386] He now kept aloof from the court of the Empress, and, having held an interview with the Queen at Guildford, resolved to devote himself, heart and soul, to setting his brother free.[387] [353] "Ecce, dum ipsa putaretur omni Anglia statim posse potiri, mutata omnia" (_Will. Malms._, p. 749). [354] _Early Plantagenets_, p. 22; _Const. Hist._, i. 330. [355] "Satisque constat quod si ejus (_i.e._ comitis) moderationi et sapientiæ a suis esset creditum, non tam sinistrum postea sensissent aleæ casum" (p. 749).