In 1177 King Henry secured the permission of the Pope to style his son John, aged twelve, Lord of Ireland, and two years later the viceroy was recalled, De Lacy returning to Ireland as Governor with a colleague in the person of Robert de la Poer of Wexford. De Lacy, however, committed the heinous crime of marrying without the king's permission, his bride being the daughter of King O'Connor, and he was superseded by Jean, Constable of Chester, who held the viceroyalty in conjunction with Richard de Peche, Bishop of Coventry. The ex-viceroy, however, managed to secure a renewal of the king's favour, and he quickly returned to Ireland, though for safety's sake Henry gave him a colleague, the Bishop of Salisbury, who was the monarch's paid spy. De Lacy pursued his policy unhampered, and very soon became wealthy and powerful. The king, learning of his representative's arrogance, decided that it was dangerous to permit a subject to taste too much of kingly power, and in 1184 he appointed his son, Prince John, now nineteen years of age, to be the chief governor of Ireland. Fortified by the Papal sanction, Prince John came {19} to Ireland with a large and costly army to impress De Lacy and his fellow-barons, and, incidentally, to subdue the turbulent Irish. An assassin removed De Lacy from his path, but the natives were stubborn, and the English were defeated whenever they gave battle. Thereupon John, with his retinue, indulged in a series of orgies, lost the remnant of his army, and after eight months returned to England in 1185. During the succeeding four years De Courcy, a powerful baron, ruled Dublin in parts and none of the rest of Ireland, but, of course, maintained the fiction that he was the king's representative, and, therefore, Viceroy of Ireland. Then followed the first viceroyalty of Hugh de Lacy, a son of the previous viceroy, and in 1190 Guillaume le Petil took over the post and occupied it until 1191. After him came in quick succession Guillaume, Earl Marechal (1191-94), Pierre Pipard (1194), Hamon de Valognes (1197-99), and Fitz-Henry, whose father was an illegitimate son of Henry I., whose first term began in 1199 and ended in 1203. De Valognes, when he retired, had to pay 1,000 marks to the king's treasury to settle his viceregal accounts. This was not exceptional. The viceroys of Ireland were given considerable powers, but they had their responsibilities, and among these was a contract to supply so much money and soldiers to their royal masters. To satisfy these contracts, the viceroys, when denied the spoils of battle, had to rob and plunder, while the viceroy who paid his debts was as rare as virtue in Dublin Castle. {20}