The Pipe Roll drawn up a month after John’s marriage shows him as holding, besides his wife’s honour of Gloucester, the honours of Peverel, Lancaster and Tickhill, two manors in Suffolk, three in Worcestershire, and some lands in Northamptonshire, together with the profits of the Forest of Sherwood in Nottinghamshire and of that of Andover in Wiltshire. All these grants were construed as liberally as possible in John’s favour; he was allowed the profits of the two forests for a whole year past, and the revenues of the other lands for a quarter of a year, while the third penny of Gloucestershire was reckoned as due to him for half a year--that is, from a date five months before his investiture with the earldom.[122] The grants of Peverel’s honour and Lancaster included the castles[123]; in the cases of Tickhill and Gloucester the castles were reserved by the king, and so too, apparently, was a castle on one of John’s Suffolk manors, Orford.[124] Four other honours appear to have been given to John at this time--Marlborough and Luggershall, including their castles; Eye and Wallingford, seemingly without their castles.[125] The aggregate value of all these lands would be about £1170; but a much greater gift soon followed. Before the end of the year six whole counties--Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall--were added to the portion of the count of Mortain. The words in which this grant is recorded by the chroniclers convey a very inadequate idea of its real importance; taken by themselves, they might be understood to mean merely that Richard gave his brother the title and the third penny of the revenue from each of the counties named.[126] That what he actually did give was something very different we learn from the Pipe Rolls, or rather from the significant omission which is conspicuous in them for the next five years. From Michaelmas 1189 to Michaelmas 1194 these six counties made no appearance at all in the royal accounts. They sent no returns of any kind to the royal treasury; they were visited by no justices appointed by the king. In a word, just as Chester and Durham were palatinates in the hands of earl and bishop respectively, so John’s two counties in mid-England and four in the south-west formed a great palatinate in his hands. He received and retained their ferms and the profits of justice and administration within their borders, and ruled them absolutely at his own will, the Crown claiming from him no account for them whatever.