The council had given an awful admonition to heretics. It had also, by an extraordinary exertion of authority, effected an union of the true believers under a legitimate head. But a most important and difficult matter remained unaccomplished, namely, the reformation of the church. The newly elected pontiff listened with apparent complacence to the petitions which were from time to time preferred to him, by the various subdivisions of the council, beseeching him to prosecute this good work by all the means in his power; but he contrived by studied delays so to protract the consideration of the particular heads of reform, that the members of the assembly, weary of their long residence in Constance, were eager to embrace the first opportunity of returning to their respective homes. This opportunity was afforded them on the twenty-second day of April, 1418, on which day the pope formally dismissed the council.[107] On the sixteenth of May he left Constance, and passing through Schaffausen, he proceeded by easy stages to Geneva, where he arrived on the eleventh of June.[108] At this city he kept his court for some months. Quitting Germany on the twelfth day of September, he proceeded to Milan, and afterwards to Mantua. Here he fixed his residence during the remainder of the year, being prevented from visiting his capital by the anarchy which the long absence of legitimate authority had occasioned in the states of the church. As a grateful return for the hospitality with which he was received by the duke of Milan, he mediated a peace between that prince and Pandolfo Malatesta, who, after having taken Bergamo, had directed his march to Brescia, and by the vigour of his operations had caused the duke to tremble for the safety of the rest of his dominions.[109] Though it does not appear that Poggio held any office under the new pontiff, he travelled in the suite of Martin V. to Mantua. At this city he suddenly quitted the Roman court with a determination to spend some time in England, to which country he had been invited by Beaufort, bishop of Winchester. This prelate, who is well known to all the admirers of Shakspeare by the title of cardinal Beaufort, was the son of the celebrated John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and uncle to the reigning English monarch Henry V. whose studies he had superintended during his residence at Oxford. In the year 1397 he was elected bishop of Lincoln. After having enjoyed this promotion for the space of eight years, he succeeded William of Wickham in the see of Winchester. He was a man of boundless ambition, well versed in the crooked policy of court intrigue, and enormously rich. In the course of a pilgrimage which he undertook to make to Jerusalem, he visited the council of Constance,[110] where it is probable he first became acquainted with the merits of Poggio.