[358] This fact is too self-evident to need illustration, but it is well illustrated by an incident of the late spring or early summer of 1217. Some person or persons unnamed “urgently entreated” Honorius to take measures for the appointment of Earl Ranulf of Chester as colleague to the Earl Marshal, whom they represented as being too old to fulfil the duties of his office, “especially in these times.” The proposal did not commend itself to the Pope; but he remitted the matter to Gualo’s judgment (_Roy. Letters_, vol. i. p. 532, Honorius to Gualo, 8th July, 1217), and it seems to have been heard of no more. How or with whom the suggestion originated there is nothing to show. That it had not come from the Legate is clear from the wording of the Pope’s letter to him. It evidently did not come from the Marshal himself, although, as has been seen, he had originally proposed that the regency should be given to Chester. There is no sign that it was the outcome of any intrigue on the part of Chester, whose conduct seems never to have in any way belied the assurance of loyal support which he had given to the Marshal in October, 1216. [359] In the very rare cases which form an exception to this rule it is the Legate whose seal takes the place of the Marshal’s. One of these exceptional cases is so interesting as to deserve special notice. It consists of two letters patent, both dated Bristol, 2nd December, 1216, attested by the King himself, and sealed with the seals of the Legate and the Bishop of Winchester (_Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 9, 10). One of these letters is addressed to the Justiciar of Ireland, Geoffrey de Marsh, the other to Meiler FitzHenry; the purpose of both is to secure for the Marshal his rights in Ireland as lord of Leinster, especially the service due to him from Meiler, which the late King had (in one of his fits of suspiciousness) taken into his own hand as security for the Marshal’s fidelity. The reason why these letters were not attested by the Marshal himself is obvious; but the interesting point in the matter is that the Legate and the Bishop, or the boy-King, or all three together, seem to have seized upon the occasion as an opportunity for putting on record the estimation in which they held him. Each letter contains a sort of parenthesis, quite unnecessary to its main purport, in praise of Earl William. “Qui” writes Henry to Geoffrey “patri nostro viventi semper fideliter astitit, et nobis assistit, et cujus fidelitatem plurimum commendamus”; while in the letter to Meiler there is a yet more unconventional and emphatic outburst of feeling--“Ipse enim W. semper patri nostro viventi fideliter astitit, et devote et nobis constanter adheret et assistit, et ipsius obsequium pre cunctis regni nostri magnatibus habemus plurimum commendatum, quoniam tamquam aurum in fornace, sic se in necessitate probavit.” [360] See the _Rolls_, 1216--November, 1218, _passim_.