For the first six months of Pandulf’s regency the chronicles are blank, so far as the internal history of England is concerned. Throughout those months, however, one man was openly setting the government at defiance. In December, 1216, the royal castles of Rockingham and Sauvey, with the important Forest jurisdictions attached to them,[581] had been committed by the Earl Marshal to the custody of William de Fors, the titular Count of Aumale[582] (or “Albemarle,” as it seems to have been commonly called in England), “that he might dwell in them with his men until his own lands, which the King’s enemies had occupied during the war, should be restored to him.”[583] The actual custodian of Sauvey, Geoffrey de Serland, was apparently somewhat unwilling to hand the place over to the young count;[584] and as Geoffrey’s loyalty is unquestioned, his reluctance was probably caused by some doubts either of William’s loyalty, or of his fitness for the charge of such an important post. If so, these doubts were well founded. On 11th February, 1218, William, having received restitution of his own lands, was bidden to deliver up Rockingham and Sauvey to another custodian.[585] This order was not obeyed; and a contemporary writer asserts that the Earl Marshal before his death “greatly repented” of having put these castles into the young count’s hands, “because of the complaints which arose out of the ill-doings of the said count and his officers who dwelt there and wrought serious injuries to the people of the district, both rich and poor.”[586] For some unexplained reason, however, no further steps seem to have been taken in the matter till six months after the Marshal’s death. Then, on 30th November, 1219, a lengthy indictment against Aumale was issued in the form of letters patent to the barons, knights, and freeholders of the five counties--Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Cumberland, Rutland, Leicestershire, and Yorkshire--in which the bulk of his possessions lay. Count William was not only detaining, against the royal will and command, certain lands and castles of the King’s which had been placed in his charge (to wit, Rockingham and Sauvey), but was also fortifying and victualling them in the King’s defiance, although a day had actually been set--“to which he paid no heed”--for him to surrender them to the King in person. He was also holding tournaments; more especially he had lately held and attended one at Brackley, contrary to the King’s express orders, and regardless of a sentence of excommunication passed upon him by the Legate. He was therefore to be avoided as an excommunicate and a rebel; the persons addressed were warned, on pain of condign punishment, not to assist him in fortifying Sauvey, but to be ready to take action against him in whatever way they should be directed by future letters from the King; and the sheriffs of the five counties were ordered to proclaim him excommunicate.[587]