Pembroke, as a man of pure patriotism and clear intelligence, could not, of course, sympathise strongly with either party. Probably he was equally shocked by the gross selfishness and hypocrisy of Fitzwalter’s confederates and the unworthy treachery of John. But, whatever his disgust, he did not desert his country in her hour of need; nor did he spare any effort to avert the horrors of civil war. Indeed, he did all he could to accommodate matters; but he spoke to men on whom moderate counsels were wasted, and who, reason or none, were bent on violent courses. It was in vain, therefore, that the great earl, having the good of his country sincerely at heart, played the part of mediator. He might as well have talked to the wild winds as either to the barons or the king. Approving neither of the conduct of the barons nor the conduct of the king, the position of William Marshal was trying. But, believing that, whatever John’s faults and failings, the interests of the English people were bound up with the interests of the Plantagenet monarchy, nothing could allure him from his fidelity to the crown; and in the midst of John’s distresses, when he was deserted by all whom he had most delighted to honour, Pembroke continued faithful and true, because he deemed that it was his duty so to do. Nor when John departed this life, and there was every prospect of Prince Louis and the Anglo-Norman barons completing the work they had so vigorously begun, did the great earl despair. Even then he saw the possibility of saving the crown from the grasp of a foreign conqueror, and, exposing himself to terrible hazard in case of failure, instantly took steps to secure the succession of Henry of Winchester, the eldest of John’s two sons by Isabel of Angoulême. But the aspect of affairs was most forbidding. Only one circumstance occurred about this time to encourage Pembroke in the patriotic course he pursued. Many of the barons who had originally invited Louis to England, or subsequently done homage to him as their sovereign, were deeply disgusted with the French prince’s hauteur and with the airs and insolence of his followers. Some of them had even sent messengers to John at Newark, offering, on certain conditions, to return to their allegiance. The king was too near the gates of death either to see the messengers or hear the conditions. But Pembroke perceived that such a fact as their having sent at all in the circumstances favoured his policy, and no sooner did he receive intelligence of John’s death than he summoned several prelates, and nobles, and knights to Gloucester, and when Peter, bishop of Winchester, and Sylvester, Bishop of Worcester, and Ralph, Earl of Chester, and William, Earl Ferrars, came thither, as also Philip de Albini, a knight of fame, and John Marshal, Pembroke’s cousin, the earl at once proposed to crown the boy Henry, and to proclaim him king.