Here, at any rate, it is clear that the date of the quarrel cannot have been later than the spring of 1213; perhaps, as we are not told how long Robert stayed in Flanders before going to France, it might be some months earlier. This agrees with the date assigned to Robert’s flight from England by the Barnwell annalist, Ralph of Coggeshall, and Roger of Wendover, all of whom place it in the latter part of 1212 (see below, p. 292). The cause of the flight, however, still remains doubtful. It will be observed that the writer of the _Histoire des Ducs_, speaking in his own person, makes the quarrel between John and Robert arise out of John’s enmity to Robert’s son-in-law, Geoffrey de Mandeville, and also makes that enmity originate in the king’s jealousy of Geoffrey’s father (the Justiciar), without a word about Geoffrey’s wife; but that he represents Robert Fitz-Walter as having given to different persons two different accounts of the matter, both of which are quite distinct not only from the account given by the writer himself, but also from each other. To the third of these three accounts--the assertion which Robert is said to have made to Pandulf, that he left England because he would not keep company with an excommunicate sovereign--it is hardly possible for any one who has read the story of the years of interdict to attach any weight. Robert’s appeal to Pandulf, moreover, is chronologically out of place; it is represented as having been made after John’s agreement with Pandulf, whereas in reality the restoration of Robert Fitz-Walter, and also of Eustace de Vesci, was one of the conditions of that agreement. The statement which Robert is said to have made “everywhere,” on the other hand, is only too likely to be true, and may well contain the true explanation of John’s designs against the husband of Fitz-Walter’s daughter; while none of the three versions is incompatible with either of the others. Still the fact remains that three different versions are thus given--two on the alleged authority of Robert Fitz-Walter, one on his own authority--by a writer who was strictly contemporary, and who ranks as one of the best, and certainly the most impartial, of our informants on the closing years of John’s reign; and this fact leaves a somewhat sinister impression as to the opinion which that writer, at least, entertained of the truthfulness of the “first champion of English liberty.”