In the year of his accession we find Innocent already corresponding with Raymond VI of Toulouse. The Count was then 41 years old, having three years before succeeded his father, Count Raymond V, whom we have seen (in the last chapter) appealing for help to put down heresy. The Counts of Toulouse were the most powerful princes of the South. As Dukes of Narbonne they were the first lay peers of France. They held the Marquisate of Provence, they were Counts of Vivarais, Venaissin, St. Gilles, and Rodez, and lords of the Albigeois, Gevaudan, Velai, Rouergue, and Agenois, besides being Suzerain to the Counts of Foix and Comminges. Raymond VI was married to Princess Joan of England, daughter of Henry Plantagenet and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and sister to Richard Cœur de Lion and King John. The Count himself was no heretic, although certain hasty expressions which he had thrown out in favour of the heretics were treasured against him by zealous Catholics. However, according to the custom of Languedoc, his orthodoxy was anything but belligerent. He was accustomed to nominate Jews and heretics to public office, and altogether he and his wealthy court thought more of enjoying themselves with poetry and the society of women than of anything else in the world. He was not warlike, and trying events were to prove him lacking in courage, self command, and staunchness of purpose. He was equally innocent of wisdom or cunning in policy. He does not seem to have been base but merely weak and easy going. If not in great place or troubled times such men may do well enough. In his first encounter with the great Pope he appears not as a favourer of heretics but as an oppressor of monks. As such he had already been excommunicated by Pope Celestine III. Innocent sent his legates to offer him absolution if he would give satisfaction to the abbot in question, that of St. Gilles; and on his promise to do so, wrote to suggest that he do penance in order to show his good will. Before a twelvemonth was out the Abbot of St. Gilles was complaining that he had in no wise mended his ways, so Innocent wrote again to his legate directing that the Count be held to his promises. It was not a hopeful beginning. For six years, with frequently changing personnel, the papal legation in Languedoc kept on trying to realize its original programme. It was a thankless job. William VIII, Lord of Montpellier, whose family was by tradition strongly Catholic, asked for the appointment of a legate to help him root out heresy from his lands. Unfortunately he was not a personage of first-rate importance, and his action was a mere flash in the pan, as none of his fellow nobles followed suit. Lea claims that even William himself had a special interest in showing zeal because he was trying to get the Pope to legitimatize the children of a second wife whom he had married without being legally separated (by annulment no doubt) from his first.