that the dispute between Engelard de Cigogné and William de Warenne arose, and was considered judicially by the Council, shews that it had been decided that John’s sheriffs held office as of right during the minority. Otherwise the dispute would have been settled by the immediate appointment of one of the claimants or of a third person without any consideration by the Council” (pp. 275–276). To me the evidence furnished by this case does not seem as conclusive as it apparently does to Mr. Turner. The fact that the Council did not settle the matter in the summary and arbitrary fashion in which, no doubt, a King of full age would have settled it, does not to my mind necessarily imply an acknowledgement of lack of competence so to settle it. Bearing in mind that we know neither the origin and grounds of the dispute nor the mode in which its final settlement was arrived at;--bearing in mind also that the rival claimants were both of them men whose continued attachment to the King it was important not to endanger--I venture to think that the Council’s dealing with the case may have been dictated chiefly, if not entirely, by motives of policy. Mr. Turner himself says, in the very next sentence after the one which I have quoted above, “There can be little doubt that Gualo and the Earl Marshal acted prudently in allowing the sheriffs to continue in office” (p. 276). Precisely; and they would have acted very imprudently had they, without absolute necessity, given offence either to a servant of the Crown so faithful and so efficient as Engelard de Cigogné (who however, as we have just seen, did _not_ “continue in office”), or to a magnate so powerful and so lately “reverted” as Earl William of Warren. To me it seems hardly safe to argue decisively from a case so isolated and so obscure.