The task of selection devolved upon Hubert de Burgh. Pandulf, a total stranger to Aquitaine and its affairs, seems to have declined to take any part in the matter beyond promising to ratify Hubert’s choice, on whomsoever it might fall.[648] Hubert was the one man then in England who knew by experience what were the most essential qualifications for the vacant post. Before he could find a man to his mind, however, another sudden change occurred in the political situation. In February or March, 1220, tidings came from Damietta that the count of La Marche was dead;[649] and before the middle of May Isabel of Angoulême wrote a startling announcement to her son. “We do you to wit that the counts of La Marche and Eu[650] being both dead, Sir Hugh de Lusignan was left, as it were, alone and without an heir, and his friends would not allow him to marry our daughter on account of her tender age, but counselled him to make such a marriage that he might speedily have an heir; and it was proposed that he should take a wife in France; which if he should do, all your land in Poitou and Gascony, and ours too, would be lost. We therefore, seeing the great danger that might arise if such a marriage should take place, and getting no support from your counsellors, have taken the said Hugh count of La Marche to be our lord and husband.”[651] This letter probably reached England shortly before the coronation; on 22nd May Henry wrote to his step-father, expressing his approval of the marriage.[652] At the same time he desired Hugh to escort Joan to La Rochelle and there deliver her to two persons (Ralph Gernon and Joldewin of Douai) who were charged to take care of her till they received further orders from England.[653] A new use for the little girl’s hand had already been devised by the royal Council; they offered it to the young King of Scots. He was invited to meet Henry at York on 10th June;[654] and there, on 15th June, the treaty of marriage was arranged. Henry pledged himself to give Joan to Alexander to be his wife, at the ensuing Michaelmas, “if he could get her”; if he could not, his second sister, Isabel, should be given to Alexander in her stead, within fifteen days of the time appointed. Henry also promised that he would either cause Alexander’s two sisters to be honourably married in England within a year from S. Denys’s day (9th October), or restore them to their brother within a month after that term should have expired.[655] All thought of a marriage between Margaret of Scotland and Henry himself had evidently been given up by mutual consent.