In July 1232 he was driven from office, overwhelmed, as Becket had been, with charges which it was impossible definitely to disprove; and after some vain attempts to escape, he was before the end of the year a prisoner and penniless. His successor in the justiciarship was Stephen Segrave, a creature of Peter des Roches. Peter himself resumed the influence over the unstable king which he had won in his early years, and filled the court and ministry with foreigners, in whose favor he displaced all the king’s English servants. [Sidenote: Richard Marshall.] Hubert’s fall was great enough in itself to excite pity; even Earl Ranulf of Chester, who had been most opposed to him as a minister, was moved to intercede for him. But far more than his personal disgrace the reversal of his English policy alarmed the baronage. Earl Ranulf, the natural head of opposition, died in 1232; Richard of Cornwall, who had hitherto shown signs of attachment to the national cause, was scarcely fitted to lead an attack on his brother’s ministers; the Earl Marshall Richard, son of the great regent, and younger brother of William Marshall who had married the king’s sister, became the spokesman of the nation. Richard Marshall was one of the most accomplished knights and the most educated gentlemen of the age; but he had to contend against the long experience and unscrupulous craft of Peter des Roches. After a distinct declaration made by the barons to the king, at his suggestion, that they would not meet the Bishop of Winchester in court or council, and a positive demand for the dismissal of the foreign servants who had been placed in office by him, the Earl Marshall was declared a traitor. The king marched against him and drove him into alliance with the disaffected Welsh. A cruel stratagem of Peter des Roches induced him to cross over to Ireland to defend his estates there, and, in a battle into which he was drawn by Peter’s agents, he was betrayed and mortally wounded. For a long time after his death the baronage continued to be without a leader of their own. [Sidenote: Fall of Peter des Roches. ]