The matter might indeed not have been settled without difficulty, had its settlement been postponed till after the Marshal’s death. His forethought and his influence averted the danger, and from the day when he transferred the custody of the King to Pandulf at Reading the Legate was recognized as chief among the guardians of little Henry and his realm. [Sidenote: 1219] Pandulf’s supremacy, however, was of a different character from that of the Earl Marshal. Theoretically, it was more absolute, for the powers which had appertained respectively to the Marshal and to Gualo were united in his person; he was at once the elected regent of the realm and the representative of its overlord. But practically his rule was less absolute, because he had the good sense to recognize from the outset that the direction of the entire home and foreign policy of England, and of its internal government, was a charge too great for a foreign ecclesiastic to undertake single-handed. He did not assume the title of “ruler of King and kingdom”; and he shared the functions of that office with the Justiciar and the Bishop of Winchester. He took but little part in the routine of administrative business; he is seldom found attesting royal letters; he left such matters to Hubert and Peter. From the very beginning of his regency, however--even before the death of the Marshal--he claimed an exclusive right of supreme control over one department of royal administration: the treasury. This appears from some letters written by him from the west of England to the treasurer Eustace de Fauconberg and the vice-chancellor Ralf de Neville in London, in the spring of the year 1219.[536] Soon after the council at Reading, Pandulf went to reside for some weeks first at Cirencester, and afterwards at the abbey of Lantony at Gloucester. On 30th April he wrote from Cirencester to Eustace and Ralf conjointly: “By our authority as Legate we lay upon you strict injunctions to give all attention and diligence to the business of the Exchequer; to deposit what money you can get in the house of the Temple in London, and to pay nothing of it out to anybody without our special command and licence; and we strictly forbid that the seal be withdrawn from the Exchequer at the bidding of anyone.”[537] At the same time he wrote a separate letter to Ralf, ordering him “not to withdraw from the Exchequer with the seal at anyone’s bidding, because the proceedings of the Exchequer and the advantage of the King would be hindered thereby.”[538] On 10th May he “warned and exhorted” Ralf to “attend faithfully and devotedly to the King’s business, and especially the business of the Exchequer which is at present imminent.”[539] In subsequent letters to Ralf he emphatically reiterated his orders to store up money in the Temple and to let none of it be paid out “without our knowledge and command”; on one occasion giving as a reason that “as you well know, the King