The abolition of the regency before the King attained his majority had inevitably resulted in giving a great increase of power to the Justiciar. Under a sovereign of full age the Justiciar was the King’s lieutenant; it was on him that the supreme powers and functions of government temporarily devolved when the King himself was absent from the realm. It followed almost of necessity that when there ceased to be a person specially set apart to exercise those powers and functions for a King under age, they fell into the Justiciar’s hands. This result of Pandulf’s resignation could not be altogether pleasing to some, at least, of the other members of the Council, or of the magnates outside the Council. It was one thing, first to accept the autocracy of a ruler whom they had unanimously chosen out of their own ranks on the score of his transcendent personal merits, and, afterwards, to yield to the dictates of one who legally represented a power acknowledged by all as superior to that of the Crown itself; it was quite another matter to be ruled by Sir Hubert de Burgh, and to be, moreover, confronted with a prospect of being ruled by him till Henry’s coming of age--an event which seemed almost as remote as ever, since, the date originally intended for it being past, it was now seemingly regarded as deferred till his twenty-first birthday.[911] Nominally, of course, Hubert governed in concert with his colleagues of the royal Council. But with the control of the executive in his hands, and no authority capable of overriding him nearer than Rome, he was practically master of the Council. There were only two other members of it who could under any circumstances have sufficient weight in themselves to act as a check upon him. Both officially and personally Stephen de Langton was a greater man than Hubert de Burgh. The Archbishop of Canterbury was not only the highest ecclesiastical authority in the land, he was also the first adviser of the Crown; and Archbishop Stephen had long ago proved himself a statesman of a far higher order than any other then living in England. But Stephen had never desired to be a leader in secular affairs; and he seems to have come home in 1221 resolved to take as little direct share in politics as possible. His one recorded public act, for more than two years after his return, was the holding, at Oseney in April, 1222, of a great Church council[912] for the settlement of ecclesiastical discipline and administration on the basis of a set of canons which he had drawn up and on which the law of the Church of England is grounded to this day. When he did intervene in temporal matters, his character, even more than his office, gave to his intervention a special importance which all parties seem to have felt and acknowledged. The Bishop of Winchester’s position was wholly different. “Peter des Roches was as hard as a rock,” said the monks of his cathedral chapter;[913] which seems to imply at any rate