Maud of Normandy, and Richard’s claim to the heritage of Eleanor, by making them do homage to Louis for Anjou and Aquitaine [Sidenote: =1176-7=] respectively; but he omitted to secure the subordination of their claims to his own during his lifetime by making them do homage to himself. Owing to this omission, it was open to Louis to assert, if he chose, that the Angevin counties and the Norman duchy legally belonged to young Henry and the duchy of Aquitaine to Richard, in virtue of the homage rendered by them for those lands direct to himself as overlord; Henry II—so he might argue—having by his consent to that homage tacitly renounced all claim to the lands for which it was rendered, and being thenceforth merely in temporary charge of them as guardian of the boys. The promise of the cession of Bourges was a very small price to pay for a weapon so tremendous as that which Henry had thus, it seems, unconsciously placed in the hands of an enemy whose mean jealousy and unscrupulous astuteness he appears never to have fully realized. He unintentionally made this possible construction of the treaty of Montmirail still more plausible through the crowning of his eldest son in 1170 and the solemn installation of the second as duke of Aquitaine in 1172. Louis acted upon it in 1173, although he does not seem ever to have put it into formal words; and his action, coupled with that of the ungrateful sons urged on by their mother, must have opened Henry’s eyes to the peril in which he had involved himself through his misplaced confidence in the loyalty both of his overlord and of his own family. It showed that as soon as Richard and Aloysia were married, Louis might and in all probability would demand the recognition of his new son-in-law as sole ruler of Aquitaine, independent of any superior save Louis himself.