Our only certain notice of Richard between January 1169 and June 1172 shows him to have been, at some time in [Sidenote: 1170] 1170, at Limoges with his mother, laying the foundation-stone of the abbey of S. Augustine.[39] On the Octave of [Sidenote: 1172] Whit-Sunday, June 11, 1172, his formal installation as duke took place at Poitiers. In the abbey church of S. Hilary he was placed, according to custom, in the abbot’s chair, and the sacred lance and banner which were the insignia of the ducal office were given to him by the Archbishop of Bordeaux and the Bishop of Poitiers. He afterwards proceeded to Limoges, where he was received with a solemn procession; the ring of S. Valeria, the protomartyr of Aquitaine, was placed on his finger, and he was then proclaimed as “the new Duke”[40]—for it was in virtue of this double investiture, given not by the king of France, but by the local prelates and clergy as representatives of the local saints of the land, that the dukes of Aquitaine claimed to hold their dukedom. Eight months later another important ceremony took place at Limoges. Henry and Eleanor, accompanied by their two elder sons, held court in the castle for a week with the kings of Aragon and Navarre, and the counts of Toulouse and Maurienne. Alfonso of Aragon, Raymond of Toulouse, and Humbert of Maurienne had met Henry at Montferrand in Auvergne, the last-named to make a treaty of marriage between his daughter and Henry’s youngest [Sidenote: 1173] son, John, the two former to seek the king’s mediation in a quarrel between themselves. Alfonso was the son of Queen Petronilla and Raymond of Barcelona, and brother of the girl to whom Richard had been betrothed in 1159. He and Raymond of Toulouse were at strife about the homage of Cerdagne, Foix, and Carcassonne; both were anxious for the friendship of their nearest and most powerful neighbour. Henry “made peace between them,” and Raymond, whose territories were ringed in by those of Aragon and Aquitaine, paid the peacemaker his price; “he became the man of the king, and of the new king his son, and of Count Richard of Poitou, to hold Toulouse of them”—that is, to hold it immediately of Richard, who held it under his elder brother and his father—“as a hereditary fief, by military service at the summons of either king or count, and by a yearly payment of a hundred marks of silver or of ten destriers worth at least ten marks each.”[41]