would have openly asserted John’s claim to the succession.”[455] But on turning to the ‘Gesta’ and to William of Newburgh, we find that the former, in what is admittedly, and the latter in what he explicitly makes, the later of the two agreements, declare the recognition of John as heir, in case of Richard’s death, to have been the feature of that later agreement, in which, according to Dr. Stubbs, it was conspicuously omitted.[456] This grave discrepancy would seem to have escaped notice. I do not profess to determine absolutely the sequence of the two agreements, but I think it not impossible that the one recited by Hoveden may prove, after all, to have been the earlier of the two. They have hardly, perhaps, been examined with sufficient care. Dr. Stubbs, for instance, writes that in the agreement described by Richard “each party chooses eleven commissioners,” while in Hoveden, “each chooses seven.”[457] But the latter were merely sureties for the oaths of the parties to observe the agreement,[458] not arbitrators for arranging its terms; while, in the other agreement, the eleven were actual arbitrators, chosen (as for the Provisions of Oxford) for drawing up the agreement independently of the parties. Again, closer investigation shows that the agreement described by Richard of Devizes is, in some ways, more, not less, favourable to the chancellor than the other. Hoveden, for instance, makes John surrender Tickhill and Nottingham, not to the chancellor, but to the archbishop as representing the king. Richard, on the other hand, makes the chancellor not only receive the castles, but personally take hostages from their keepers for their safe custody. In Hoveden, indeed, the possession of these two castles is made, on the contrary, a kind of security for the chancellor’s good behaviour. Richard, to speak more generally, brings the chancellor to the front, and leaves the archbishop in the background, which is precisely what might be expected when Longchamp felt himself strong enough to pose once more as the king’s representative. Moreover, we have a hint as to the order of these agreements in their provisions as to Gerard de Camville. In Hoveden’s document we read that he is to be provisionally restored, then to have a fair trial, and, if convicted, is to lose his castle and his shrievalty.[459] Richard, on the contrary, describes him as restored to the chancellor’s favour, and, therefore, to the permanent custody of the castle.[460] The latter, surely, is a later stage. On all these grounds I lean strongly to the view that Richard of Devizes describes the later and final compromise, which, unlike its predecessor, was arranged by formal arbitration. On this hypothesis the archbishop of Rouen had refused to give way about the succession,[461] while the chancellor purchased concessions from John by throwing over Arthur. But as I do not claim to have demonstrated this, I hope my view will be discussed by some duly qualified critic.