the throne, and had remained personally faithful to him to the last although his own sons were on the side of the barons. [Sidenote: The Charter re-issued. ] This little party had the child crowned on October 28, at Gloucester; and on November 12, at Bristol, re-issued the Great Charter in his name, with some important omissions. They did not venture at so critical a time to renew the articles which placed taxation in the hands of the national council or define the nature of that assembly; but in the final clause of the document these articles were declared to be suspended only because of the urgency of the times. The guardianship of the king and what little remained to him of the kingdom was placed in the hands of William Marshall, and the bishops and barons swore fealty to Henry, as his contemporaries called him--Henry IV., or Henry of Winchester, the son of King John. The office of guardian for an infant king had never yet been needed in England, at least since the days of Ethelred the Unready, and all that we know of the present arrangement is that it was made in the council, and with the acquiescence of the legate. The title that William Marshall took was “governor of the king and kingdom.” We might have expected that the queen-mother would have been guardian of the person of the King; but he had no near male kinsman to take charge of the kingdom, according to the reasonable rule that the defence of the inheritance belongs to the nearest heir, that of the person to the nearest relation who cannot inherit; and accordingly the wardship of both was entrusted by the national council to a chosen leader. No other in age, dignity, experience, or faithfulness came near the Earl of Pembroke. [Sidenote: Struggle with Lewis. ]