The archbishop was determined to be satisfied with nothing short of a literal fulfilment of the promise on which he had insisted as a condition of the king’s absolution, the promise that to “_all_ men” their rights should be restored. He saw that this end could be gained only by the instrumentality of the barons; he also saw that it could be gained only by a policy based on clearer and firmer, as well as broader and nobler, lines than any of them were capable of designing. They, indeed, had no definite scheme of policy; nor had they any leader able to furnish them with such a scheme. The men of highest standing among the magnates, such as the earls of Salisbury, Chester, Albemarle, Warren, Cornwall and William the Marshal,--the men of highest standing among the official class, such as the heads of the houses of Aubigny, Vipont, De Lucy, Basset, Cantelupe, Neville, Brewer[966]--had either gone to the war or paid their scutage for it without a murmur, and stood utterly aloof from the group of “Northerners,” among whom the most conspicuous were two barons of secondary rank, Eustace de Vesci and Robert Fitz-Walter. Both Eustace and Robert are said to have had just grounds for bitter personal resentment against John; but Robert Fitz-Walter had twice already shown himself to be both a traitor and a coward; and on the second occasion, in 1212, Eustace de Vesci had done the like. The pardon and restoration of both these men in the following year was a matter of policy, but was not due to any merits of their own.[967] It was not under the inspiration and guidance of such men as these that the liberties of the English people could be won, nor even that the barons could succeed in their struggle for the privileges, pretended or real, of their own order. Another guide offered himself to them in the person of Stephen Langton, and offered to them at the same time a definite basis of action in the charter of Henry I. Whether the offer was made at the meeting in S. Paul’s in August 1213, or at some later date and in some other way, is of little consequence; it is enough that antecedent probability and after-history alike justify the general belief of which Roger of Wendover is the spokesman:--that it was Langton who brought to light the charter of which the very existence seems to have been forgotten, and it was from him that the barons adopted it as the basis of their demands.