From that time forth Peter never held office as a minister of state. He never had done so, save during those sixteen months of his justiciarship in 1214–1215.[577] He had, however, received another token of John’s confidence; he had been entrusted with the education of John’s heir. We have seen that in October, 1216, the Earl Marshal, with the assent of the other loyal barons, bestowed on Peter the important charge of the little King’s person, expressly on the ground that he had already been the child’s “master” and proved himself “a very good” one, who had “brought him up carefully and well.” As Henry was but just nine years old when these words were spoken,[578] we must infer from them that he had been under Peter’s care from a very tender age. Probably John had placed him in the bishop’s household as early as it was possible to do so, somewhat as Henry II had placed his eldest son, when quite a young child, in the household of Thomas the Chancellor.[579] The Marshal and the magnates did only what was natural and right when they replaced their young sovereign under the charge of his former tutor. The commission which Peter received from them, however, involved more than the boy’s education; it expressly included the responsibility for his personal safety. The man to whom was confided a charge so weighty as this obviously needed no official title to vindicate for him a prominent place among the counsellors by whose advice England was to be governed in his royal pupil’s name; and the active and versatile Southerner, experienced and efficient alike in matters of war, of administration, of finance, and of well-nigh every kind of public business, secular and ecclesiastical, was a colleague whose help the official governors of the realm would have been foolish indeed to reject or undervalue on the score of his foreign birth. They and he seem to have worked together without perceptible friction throughout the regency of the Marshal. The sharp words which passed between Peter and the regent shortly before the latter’s death, and Peter’s unseemly behaviour to the younger Marshal and the Legate next day, probably resulted from a misunderstanding on the part of the bishop. He evidently thought that the proposal to appoint a new “guardian of King and Kingdom” and the symbolical delivery of the King into the hands of Pandulf were meant to deprive himself of his precious charge. There was, however, no such intention. Pandulf gave Peter the rebuke which his violence deserved, but immediately replaced Henry under his care.[580] [Sidenote: 1218–1219]