This affection of the young Earl for the Green Isle by no means increased his popularity with his English retainers. Saxon and Celt have always mutually looked down upon each other. The Irish saw in the English intruding strangers, none the more welcome for being conquerors; the English reckoned the Irish uncivilised barbarians with whom no person of refinement could be satisfied to associate. They were not themselves so over-refined that they need have been particular: but the half-educated man (still more woman) is usually more fastidious on the score of vulgarity than the blue-blooded noble. There were murmurs among Roger’s suit that he was too accessible to the masses, and that his heart was rather Irish than English. When the King discovered, somewhat to his surprise, that his chosen heir had so unexpectedly disappeared from the scene on the plea of looking after his Irish property, he sent him a commission of lieutenancy for Ulster, Connaught, and Meath—a most convenient arrangement for Roger, since it afforded him a full excuse for not returning to England until the state of affairs should have changed. His Majesty was not the only person who was puzzled by Roger’s proceedings. But there was another person who was not puzzled at all. Of one point Roger might safely have felt assured—that, however his sudden disappearance might surprise and perplex others, his uncle Gloucester at least would not fail to understand it. But the fact that a particular material had proved unsuitable for his purpose was not likely to ruin the designs of so far-seeing and scheming a conspirator as Gloucester. Having convinced himself that his nephew of March was not the soft and malleable article that he had supposed him, Gloucester merely cast the useless thing on one side, and set his busy brain to work to evolve a fresh project. It proved a very different one from the last. His new scheme involved a partition of the kingdom into four parts, of which his brother of Lancaster was to be bought off with one (a matter somewhat easier said than done); York, who was plastic as putty in the hands of Gloucester, was to have another; Arundel was to be rewarded with the third; and the fourth fell to Gloucester himself. March was left out altogether. How long this sagacious disposition of political affairs would have lasted, may be very reasonably questioned: certainly not, at the furthest, beyond the second generation. A quarter of England would never have contented Derby, for whose ambitious soul the world was scarcely wide enough, nor could Rutland have reigned an hour in his division without plotting against the other three.