But Earl William’s position was from the outset not that of a Justiciar at all. The Justiciar was the King’s second in command--the foremost minister of the Crown when the sovereign was present, his lieutenant and vicegerent when he was absent from the realm; in either case, his delegate and nothing more. Earl William was not the King’s delegate; he had not been appointed by the King and was not removable at the King’s pleasure; he had been called by the Legate and the magnates to govern the realm during the King’s minority, as guardian of the King himself. He was, in modern phraseology, not Viceroy but Regent. Still, there was just sufficient analogy between his functions and those which, under certain circumstances, appertained to the Justiciar, to suggest his adoption of that title, in a tentative sort of way, until a better one could be devised.[356] In a word, as his office was a novelty and an experiment, so its earliest appellation seems to have been a makeshift. Before the end of November, 1216, that appellation was replaced by a loftier and more comprehensive one--“Governor of the king and of the kingdom.”[357] No attempt seems to have been made at any further definition either of the limits of his powers, or of his relation to the royal Council; there was in fact no means of defining either, nor any authority capable of so doing. In one sense he was above the council; but in another sense he was merely its most important member; its other members acted in subordination to him, but he was not independent of them; they were the King’s councillors, not his; nay, more--it was from them that he had received his authority, and he was thus in some sense responsible to them for his exercise of it. He was also, and above all, in theory at least, responsible to the Legate and, through the Legate, to the Pope.[358] It is thus impossible to determine precisely how much of the credit of the policy which freed England from her invaders and restored peace and order to the distracted country and the ruined administration is due to the Marshal himself, and how much to his colleagues, Gualo, Hubert, Peter des Roches, and the other ministers of the late King. A large share of credit must in any case belong to them for a steady, faithful, and intelligent co-operation without which the Marshal obviously could not have carried on either war or government at all. But it is certain that for two years and a half after the coronation no act was done in the King’s name without the Marshal’s consent; for, except on a very few special occasions, all the royal letters during that period were attested by him and sealed with his seal.[359] It may therefore fairly be said that whatsoever they did in England, he was the doer of it. [Sidenote: 1216–1217]