The importance of the existence of Ernulf and his heirs is seen when we come to deal with the fate of the earldom of Essex. That Ernulf was "exiled" even for a time becomes a remarkable fact, when we remember that he might have found shelter from the king among the followers of the Empress in the west. But he and his father had offended a power greater than the king. The Empress could not shield him from the vengeance of the outraged Church. It is, I think, in his doings at Ramsey, and in the penalties he had thus incurred, that we must seek the reason of his being, as we shall find, so strangely passed over, in favour of his younger brother Geoffrey, who had not partaken of his guilt. To another charter, hitherto unknown, we owe our knowledge of the fact that Geoffrey was recognized as his father's heir, by the Empress, on his death. Instructive as its contents would doubtless be, it is known to us only from the following note, made by one who had inspected its transcript in the lost volume of the Great Coucher:— "Carta M. Imperatricis per quam dat Gaufredo de Mannevill filio Gaufredi Comitis Essexie totam hereditatem suam et omnes tenuras quas concessit patri suo. Testes R. Com. Gloec., Rag. Com. Cornub., Rog. Com. Hereford, R. Regis filio, Umfridus de Bohun Dap., Johannes filius Gisleberti, W. de Pontlarch' Camerario. Apud Divisas.[730] The names of Robert, Earl of Gloucester, and Roger, Earl of Hereford, limit the date of this charter to 1144-1147, and the father of the grantee died, as we have seen, in August, 1144. It should be noted that nothing is said here of the earldom of Essex, and that only an absolutely new creation could confer the dignity on Geoffrey, as he was not his father's heir. Here, however, yet another charter, also at present unknown, comes to our assistance with its unique evidence that Geoffrey must have held his father's title before 1147.[731] He then disappears from view for the time. We must now skip some twelve years, and pass to that most important charter in which the earldom was conferred anew on Geoffrey by Henry II. Only those who have made a special study of these subjects can realize the value of this charter, a record hitherto unknown. The attitude of Henry II. to the creations of Stephen and Matilda, the extent to which he recognized them, and the method in which he did so, are subjects on which the historian is peculiarly anxious for information, but on which our existing evidence is singularly and lamentably slight. Of the four charters quoted in the _Reports on the Dignity of a Peer_, only two can be said to have a real bearing on the question, and of these one is of uncertain date, while the meaning of the other is doubtful. But the charter I am about to deal with is remarkably clear in its meaning, and possesses the advantage that its contents enable us to date it with precision.