John’s earliest known appearance as witness to a charter of his father’s seems to date from the early part of the year 1182; his style is simply “John, the king’s son.”[34] This charter was given at Arundel. When Henry went over sea, in March, he left John in England under the guardianship of the justiciar, Ranulf Glanville.[35] Fifteen months later, the king’s arrangements for the disposal of the Angevin succession were all upset by the death of his eldest son, June 11, 1183. Almost heart-broken as the father was, one consolation immediately suggested itself; now at last he might secure to his favourite child some provision at once loftier and more independent than any number of Norman counties or English earldoms, and more substantial than his titular sovereignty in Ireland. In September Henry “sent to England for his youngest son, John, and his master Ranulf de Glanville”; when they had joined him in Normandy he sent for Richard, and bade him cede the duchy of Aquitaine to John and receive the boy’s homage for it.[36] This command shows clearly what Henry’s present intentions were. Richard was to take the place proper to the eldest son, as heir to the whole Angevin dominions; when he should enter upon his inheritance, his brothers were to hold the two great underfiefs, Britanny and Aquitaine, under him, just as he and Geoffrey had been destined to hold them under the younger Henry; and this arrangement for the future was to be made binding by the immediate homage of his brothers to him, although for the present all three sons were to remain in subjection to their father. The scheme was reasonable and just; but in Richard’s eyes it had a fatal defect. For the last eight years he had been actual ruler of Aquitaine, as Geoffrey had been actual ruler of Britanny. From 1175 Henry had given his second and third sons a free hand and left them to govern their respective duchies for themselves. Geoffrey’s hold upon Britanny had been secured in 1181 by his marriage with Constance; Richard had secured his own hold upon Aquitaine by eight years of hard fighting with its rebellious barons, and was now, in truth, duke by the right of the sword. But young Henry, the crowned king, had throughout these years been in England little more than a cipher, held in check by the authority of his father when present, and by that of the justiciars in his father’s absence; while in Normandy and the Angevin lands he had had no practical authority at all. Richard had no mind to give up substance for shadow. To be _de facto_ duke of Aquitaine was far better than to be merely titular duke of Normandy and count of Anjou; for the title of king, he knew, Henry would never again grant to any one during his own lifetime. Richard’s answer therefore was that, so long as he lived, he and he alone would rule Aquitaine.[37] In June 1184 the king went back to England,[38] leaving John in Normandy. John was now in his seventeenth year, and Henry is