Returning now to the state of affairs in October, 1216, when John had just finished his suicidal career at Newark, we find the kingdom to a very great extent in the hands of the party pledged to support Lewis, the enterprising prince to whom the French have not hesitated to attribute the title of the Lion, or the Lion-hearted. This party comprised nearly all the baronage, for John’s insane behaviour during the last year had dispersed the friends whom after the granting of Magna Carta he had gathered to his side; even his brother William, Earl of Salisbury, had gone over to the enemy. Lewis’s party had, however only one point of union, the hatred and distrust inspired by John; and when John was once removed, the disruption of the party and the expulsion of Lewis were sure to come in time. It was certain that all real national feeling would take part against a foreign king; that all the desires for free and ancient institutions and good government would have a much better chance of contentment in the prospect of the reign of the child Henry; and that even the party among the barons which still clung to the feudal ideas of government would have a much better opportunity of regaining its coveted influence through him than through Lewis. But the cause of the child was at first sight very weak. John had driven all the strong men from his side; and Archbishop Langton, on whom the defence of what was now become the national dynasty would properly have devolved, was at Rome, in temporary disgrace. It may be fairly said that had not the Roman legate Gualo taken up a decided line, had not Honorius III. seen his way to reconcile the rights of the nation with the maintenance of the Plantagenet dynasty, Lewis must for the moment have triumphed, and England would then have had to win her freedom by a mortal struggle with France. But Gualo was staunch. The great Pope who had committed England to him was just dead, but Honorius III. was no more likely than Innocent to be satisfied with half-service; and the legate saw that both his own prospects of advancement and the credit of the Roman see were involved in the success of this administration. With him was Peter des Rochos, the Bishop of Winchester, whom John had made justiciar after the death of Geoffrey Fitz Peter. He was a Poictevin who had been transformed from a knight into a bishop with few qualifications and little ceremony; but he was faithful to John and to his son, and he was the representative man of the foreign party at court, which stood chiefly if not solely by personal attachment to the king. There were two or three other bishops who had won their places in John’s chancery, the Earl Ranulf of Chester, nearly the last left of the great feudal aristocracy of the Conquest; William Marshall, the Earl of Pembroke, now growing old, who had been the intimate friend of the younger Henry, who had been a justice and regent under Richard, who had helped to set John on