Concord and tranquillity did indeed, to all outward seeming, reign at that moment over all the dominions of the English Crown, except the Duchy of Aquitaine. One of the most difficult of the many difficult problems with which the regency had to deal was the problem of how to retain Poitou and Gascony for Henry. The heritage of his grandmother Eleanor had descended to him almost complete. Philip Augustus had never made any attempt to conquer Gascony; he had seized Poitou, but the greater part of it had been regained by John in 1214 and left in his possession by the terms of the truce with which the war between him and Philip had ended. John’s seneschal in Gascony at that time was one of his chamberlains, Geoffrey de Neville[615]; another chamberlain--Hubert de Burgh--soon became seneschal of Poitou.[616] At the end of the year 1214 or the beginning of the next Geoffrey de Neville was succeeded by a baron of Saintonge, Reginald de Pons;[617] in June 1215 Hubert de Burgh became Justiciar of England; before that year closed, the seneschalship of Poitou was united with that of Gascony in the hands of Reginald[618]; and thenceforth the two offices were always granted together and became practically one. Reginald resigned it a few months after John’s death, and was succeeded by Archbishop William of Bordeaux.[619] A year later William gave it up likewise, and in May 1218 Geoffrey de Neville was again sent across the sea to be Seneschal of Poitou and Gascony.[620] Reginald and William had resigned ostensibly for the same reason--because they wanted to go to the Holy Land. Possibly the layman and the prelate may both of them have been glad of an excuse for ridding themselves of an extremely disagreeable office. The loyalty--such as it was--of Poitou and Gascony to the English Crown was of very recent growth; it had sprung up since the expulsion of the Angevins from their other continental dominions. The one persistent political aim of the men of the South was to escape as much as possible from all external control, no matter whence it came. Their land was full of thriving cities and towns, each with a highly developed administrative organization of its own, almost like so many miniature republics; and of high-spirited, hot-tempered barons who were perpetually quarrelling among themselves. Moreover, towns and barons were mutually jealous of one another; and all were alike jealous of any interference with their respective privileges, corporate or individual, on the part of a higher power. They were also all alike shrewd enough to see that their chances of independence were greater under the rule of a sovereign beyond the sea than under the direct rule of the King of France. But they were also, all alike, fully alive to the advantages of their position between two rival overlords; and the possibility of some turn in Aquitanian politics which might furnish a plea, an excuse, or a temptation for French intervention was a danger