From this document it must be inferred that nothing worse than mismanagement was proved against Geoffrey. His mismanagement however had clearly reached a point at which any sovereign of full age, and in a position to enforce his commands, would have put an end to it by summarily dismissing Geoffrey from his office. But the guardians of Henry III knew that they were not in a position to enforce the dismissal of the Justiciar whom Henry’s father had left in charge of the March in Ireland. Geoffrey was not willing to resign because he was not prepared to render an account of his stewardship. If they issued a direct order for his supersession it was highly probable that he would set them and their order at defiance, and that he would be supported in his defiance by the wardens of the royal castles who owed their appointments to him. Henry could not go, as John had gone, with an armed force at his back, to settle matters in Ireland for himself; nor could anyone in England be sent to do so in his stead. Should force be needed to subdue Geoffrey, the task of subduing him could only be committed to some of the barons of the March; and to commit it to any of these would be to plunge the whole March into a civil war which might result in the complete destruction of the King’s authority there. The case against Geoffrey was clearly not strong enough to justify Pandulf and his colleagues in taking measures which involved such a risk. The course which they took in giving Geoffrey another chance of redeeming his errors, while hedging him round with the strongest moral restraints that could be devised to prevent a repetition of those errors, was at once more politic and more just.