He it was, too, that, while protector in the next reign, offered pardon to the disaffected barons, and confirmed the Magna Charta. He also extended its benefits to Ireland, and commanded the sheriffs to read it publicly at the county courts, and enforce its exact observance. It was this same Earl of Pembroke whom Shakespeare represents pleading so eloquently for the enfranchisement of the unfortunate Prince Arthur: “If what in rest you have, in right you hold, Why then your fears (which, as they say, attend The steps of wrong), should move you to mew up Your tender kinsman, and to choke his days With barbarous ignorance, and deny his youth The rich advantage of good exercise? That the time’s enemies may not have this To grace occasions, let it be our suit That you have bid us ask his liberty: Which for our goods we do no further ask, Than whereupon our weal, on you depending, Counts it your weal, he have his liberty.” This great statesman was a benefactor to the Templars, and, when he died, his body was borne here in state and buried with great pomp on Ascension Day, 1219. Here, too, are the monumental effigies of his sons—William Marshall, the younger, one of the bold barons of Runnymede, to whom we are indebted for the Magna Charta; and Gilbert Marshall, “the flower of the chivalry of that time,” who married a Scotch princess, and went to the defence of the sacred tomb. Although the elder Marshall was just enough to extend the benefits of the Magna Charta to Ireland, we are told that, during his campaign in that country, he seized the lands of the Bishop of Fernes, and kept them, in spite of a sentence of excommunication. After the earl’s death, the bishop came to London, and laid the case before the king, who, alarmed for the weal of his old guardian’s soul, accompanied the bishop to his tomb. Matthew Paris says that, as they stood by it, the bishop solemnly apostrophized the departed earl: “O William! who lyest here interred and held fast by the chain of excommunication, if those lands which thou hast unjustly taken from my church be rendered back to me by the king, or by your heir, or by any of your family, and if due satisfaction be made for the loss and injury I have sustained, I grant you absolution; but if not, I confirm my previous sentence, so that, enveloped in your sins, you stand for evermore condemned to hell!” However alarmed the king might have appeared about his guardian’s soul, restitution was not made, and the stout old bishop, who seems to have been soundly orthodox as to the temporal rights of the church, denounced the earl and his race in right Scriptural phrase: “His name shall be rooted out in one generation; and his sons shall be deprived of the blessing, _Increase and multiply_. Some of them shall die a miserable death; their inheritance shall be scattered; and this thou, O king! shalt behold in thy life‐time; yea, in the days of thy flourishing youth.”