Hubert’s, the two leaders themselves included.[946] Next day (30th December) new custodians were appointed to twenty-five royal castles. The former castellans thus displaced were thirteen in number. One of them had, before the general surrender, resigned on account of ill-health. Of the remaining twelve, five had been concerned in the recent attempt to oust the Justiciar--Ranulf of Chester, William de Cantelupe, Engelard de Cigogné, Brian de Lisle, and Falkes; the other seven were either neutral, or distinctly of the opposite party--Ralf de Gernon, John Russell, Stephen de Sedgrave, William Brewer, the Bishop of Norwich, the Earl of Salisbury, and the Justiciar himself. Out of the seven royal castles which Hubert had in his charge the only one not transferred to other keeping was the Tower of London, of which the custody was traditionally attached to the justiciarship.[947] On 7th January {1224} orders were given for the transfer of three more castles--Winchester, Porchester, and Southampton, all in the custody of Bishop Peter; and on 2nd February the lands of the young heir to the earldom of Devon, and the castles which formed part of them, were committed to a new warden in place of the boy’s stepfather, Falkes.[948] The actual displacement of castellans consequent on the surrender of 29th December, 1223, seems to have ended here. By that surrender several royal castles which make no appearance in the Rolls at this time must have been, like the others, placed legally in the King’s hands; but he seems to have neither appointed new wardens to them, nor re-committed them to their existing wardens; these latter were simply left in possession, as they had originally been appointed, during the King’s pleasure. Even members of the party opposed to Hubert were in this informal way suffered to retain some of their wardenships; Falkes lost--at that moment--only three of the many royal castles which he held;[949] Gloucester, which though assigned to Hubert by Ralf Musard under compulsion in the autumn of 1223 had never passed actually into Hubert’s custody, was not taken from Ralf till November, 1225.[950] On the other hand, although only five sheriffs were displaced, their displacement involved the transfer of thirteen shires to other hands, and four of the five men were opponents of Hubert; the fifth, John Russell, was merely removed from Somerset to the joint sheriffdom of Leicestershire and Warwickshire, taken from William de Cantelupe. On the same day--30th December, 1223--the Earl of Chester lost the shrievalties of Lancashire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire, and Falkes lost two out of his seven shires; on 18th January {1224} he was deprived of four more, Rutland alone being left to him; and in the interval, on 7th January, Bishop Peter was deprived of the sheriffdom of Hampshire. Considering the recent political alliance between Chester, Cantelupe, and Falkes, and the geographical relation to one another (and also, in the case