her-in-law of the king, the gallant
and successful soldier, the worthy successor of his great father, came
home from Brittany early in 1231. His last act was to marry his sister,
Isabella, to Richard of Cornwall. Within ten days of the wedding his
body was laid beside his father in the Temple Church at London. In
October, 1232, died Randolph of Blundeville, the last representative of
the male stock of the old line of the Earls of Chester, and long the
foremost champion of the feudal aristocracy against Hubert. The contest
between them had been fought with such chivalry that the last public act
of the old earl was to protect the fallen justiciar from the violence of
his foes. For more than fifty years Randolph had ruled like a king over
his palatine earldom; had, like his master, his struggles with his own
vassals, and had perforce to grant to his own barons and boroughs
liberties which he strove to wrest from his overlord for himself and his
fellow nobles. He was not a great statesman, and hardly even a
successful warrior. Yet his popular personal qualities, his energy, his
long duration of power, and his enormous possessions, give him a place
in history. His memory, living on long in the minds of the people,
inspired a series of ballads which vied in popularity with the cycle of
Robin Hood,[1] though, unfortunately, they have not come down to us. His
estates were divided among his four sisters. His nephew, John the Scot,
Earl of Huntingdon, received a re-grant of the Chester earldom; his
Lancashire lands had already gone to his brother-in-law, William of
Ferrars, Earl of Derby; other portions of his territories went to his
sister, the Countess of Arundel, and the Lincoln earldom, passing
through another sister, Hawise of Quincy, to her son-in-law, John of
Lacy, constable of Chester, raised the chief vassal of the palatinate to
comital rank. None of these heirs of a divided inheritance were true
successors to Randolph. With him died the last of the great Norman
houses, tenacious beyond its fellows, and surpassing in its two
centuries of unbroken male descent the usual duration of the medieval
baronial family. Its collapse made easier the alien invasion which
threatened to undo Hubert's work.

[1] "Ich can rymes of Robyn Hode, and of Randolf erl of
Chestre," _Vision of Piers Plowman_, i., 167; ii., 94.

CHAPTER III.

THE ALIEN INVASION.

With the dismissal of Hubert on July 29, 1232, Peter des Roches