That defeat decided the struggle; within a month Lewis had consented to make peace and go home. The legate showed a wise and politic mercy in treating the rebels as ecclesiastical offenders and admitting them to absolution and penance; and William Marshall was not anxious to alienate friends by exacting the penalties for a treason which it might be difficult to define, and in which his own family was largely implicated. By Michaelmas 1217 the peace was restored, and the Charter again re-issued in a still more modified form. This may be regarded as the ending of the Magna Carta struggle in its first phase. It was now become permanently the palladium of English constitutional liberty; it was recognized as the salvation of king and kingdom, and the legate, instead of anathematizing, had turned and blessed it. The rule of William Marshall continued until his death, early in 1219. The kingdom was ostensibly at peace; but order was not easily restored after a struggle which had lasted for more than four years, and which was itself the result of a long period of misgovernment. In the general struggle for power which followed the pacification it was not always the wisest or the best men that gained the ultimate ascendency. It is clear that from the very first there were among the royal counsellors men who had neither understood nor sympathized with the policy of Langton. Hence the omission from the re-issued charters of the clauses by which the king forbade and renounced unconstitutional taxation, and prescribed the order of the national council. Many of the men who had been leaders of the baronial party at Runnymede had fallen into treasonable complicity with France or had perished in the war; so that the regent was forced to give a disproportionate share of power to the personal friends of John, foreigners and mercenaries as they were, or to men like the Earl of Chester and the Count of Aumâle, who fought really for their own feudal independence. Thus we must account for the power of such men as Falkes de Breauté, who almost caused a civil war before he would submit to the law or resign to the king the castles which he held as the king’s servant. Hence also, perhaps, the retention of Hubert de Burgh in the justiciarship; for he, great man as he afterwards proved himself, was as yet only known as a creature of John. Hence too the distinguished position retained by Peter des Roches, although he, as Bishop of Winchester, had a dignity and power of his own. Hence, further on, the jealousy with which, after the death of the Earl of Pembroke, the administration of Hubert de Burgh was viewed by the barons, and the constant risings against royal favorites and against the too strong government exercised in the name of the boy king. These troubles furnish nearly all the history of the years of Henry’s minority. [Sidenote: Work of William Marshall. ] [Sidenote: New Government.] [Sidenote: Second coronation. ]