We can hardly doubt that there is some connexion between these letters and another yet more remarkable document, whose date must lie between Pandulf’s visit in August 1211 and the spring of 1213. This is a manifesto addressed “to all faithful Christians” by “the whole of the magnates of Ireland,” with William the Marshal and Meiler Fitz-Henry at their head, expressing their “grief and astonishment” that the Pope should propose to absolve the subjects of the king of England from their allegiance, and declaring their approval of John’s political conduct and their determination to “live and die with their king.”[779] This manifesto may have been drawn up when the barons of the Irish March, at the Marshal’s suggestion, renewed their fealty to John; or it may have been their answer to John’s request that they would set their hands to and transmit to him letters patent similar to those which, he says, had been “made for him” by the magnates of England. There is, indeed, another possible alternative. On more than one occasion, and by more than one chronicler, John is charged with forging letters and other like documents. The letter ascribed to the magnates of Ireland and the letters--of which nothing is now known--sent to them by John as having been issued by the magnates of England may therefore have been both alike forgeries. There is, however, nothing to indicate that such was the case. If it was not, then it seems that the barons of England, who in the autumn of 1212 were believed to be on the verge of rebellion or something worse, were yet so weak, as well as so false, that John could force from them a collective declaration in writing which, whatever its precise import may have been, was evidently a declaration in his interest and for his advantage; and that in the same crisis the barons of the Irish March, acting under the guidance of the noblest and wisest man in their whole order, ranged themselves boldly on the side of John against all his enemies. The king, to whom for a moment ruin had seemed so near that he himself gave way to despair, was within a few months, perhaps even a few weeks, outwardly more than ever supreme. On the other hand, those same loyal barons in Ireland who seem to have so emphatically declared their resolve to stand by the king in resistance to the papal sentence of deposition had yet urged upon him the importance of procuring a withdrawal of that sentence by endeavouring to make peace with the Church. Whether they did, according to John’s request, draft a form of proposals to be laid before the Pope, there is nothing to show; but it is certain that in November John despatched to Rome four envoys charged to offer his acceptance of the terms which Pandulf and Durand had proposed fifteen months before.[780] [Sidenote: 1212–13]