(who had made up his mind not to return to England), surrendered it into the King’s hand, and thereupon immediately received it back again to hold “quamdiu nobis placuerit” as constable in his own person (_Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 203). I will not dispute that a claim to continuity of tenure was made, explicitly or implicitly, by some of the castellans, and that _in practice_ they mostly succeeded in enforcing it; but that it ever received formal “recognition” seems to me disproved by (_a_) the oath of the barons at Henry’s second coronation, and (_b_) the Pope’s letters on the subject of the royal castles. (_a_) “From the annals of Dunstable we learn that on the morrow of the coronation (in 1220) the barons who were there present swore that they would resign their castles and wardships” (_castra et wardias suas_) “at the King’s will, and would faithfully render accounts of their farms at the Exchequer” (Turner, pt. II, p. 239; see the original, from _Ann. Dunst._ a. 1220, above, footnote 680). This oath--taken at a time (18th May, 1220) when it had not yet been settled whether Henry was to attain his majority at fourteen or at twenty-one, and when his actual age was twelve years and seven months--is clearly to be understood as a promise to yield up the castles of which they had custody, and render account for them, whenever they should in the King’s name be called upon to do so, from that day forth, not merely after the King’s coming of age. Mr. Turner understands it thus, for he comments upon the passage, “In all probability the chief object of these proceedings was to obtain the castles of Rockingham and Sauvey from the Count of Aumale” (pt. II, p. 240). (_b_) On 26th May, 1220, the Pope issued orders that all prelates holding royal castles should surrender them; and on 28th May, that no man should be suffered to retain the custody of more than two royal castles at once (_Roy. Lett._, vol. I, pp. 535, 121; cf. above, pp. 146, 147, and Turner, pt. II, p. 242). To me it appears that these letters are incompatible with any “recognition” by the Pope--who, be it remembered, was acknowledged by all parties as the legal overlord of England and the chief guardian of the King--of the doctrine of the castellans’ right to continuity of tenure during the King’s minority; and that the oath taken after the coronation is equally incompatible with any such recognition on the part of the regents in England, or even with any general recognition of that doctrine among the castellans themselves.