me specifically
releasing him from the jurisdiction of the primate. In these
circumstances it was natural for Bishop Peter and the legate to join
together against the justiciar and the archbishop. Finding that the
legate was too strong for him, Langton betook himself to Rome, and
remained there nearly a year. Before he went home he persuaded Honorius
to promise not to confer the same benefice twice by papal provision,
and to send no further legate to England during his lifetime. Pandulf
was at once recalled, and left England in July, 1221, a month before
his rival's return. He was compensated for the slight put upon him by
receiving his long-deferred consecration to Norwich at the hands of the
pope. There is small reason for believing that he was exceptionally
greedy or unpopular. But his withdrawal removed an influence which had
done its work for good, and was becoming a national danger. Langton
henceforth could act as the real head of the English Church. In 1222,
he held an important provincial council at Oseney abbey, near Oxford,
where he issued constitutions, famous as the first provincial canons
still recognised as binding in our ecclesiastical courts. He began once
more to concern himself with affairs of state, and Hubert found him a
sure ally. Bishop Peter, disgusted with his declining influence,
welcomed his appointment as archbishop of the crusading Church at
Damietta. He took the cross, and left England with Falkes de Breaute as
his companion. Learning that the crescent had driven the cross out of
his new see, he contented himself with making the pilgrimage to
Compostella, and soon found his way back to England, where he sought
for opportunities to regain power.

Relieved of the opposition of Bishop Peter, Hubert insisted on
depriving barons of doubtful loyalty of the custody of royal castles,
and found his chief opponent in William Earl of Albemarle. In dignity
and possessions, Albemarle was not ill-qualified to be a feudal leader.
The son of William de Fors, of Oleron, a Poitevin adventurer of the
type of Falkes de Breaute, he represented, through his mother, the line
of the counts of Aumale, who had since the Conquest ruled over
Holderness from their castle at Skipsea. The family acquired the status
of English earls under Stephen, retaining their foreign title,
expressed in English in the form of Albemarle, being the first house of
comital rank abroad to hold an earldom with a French name unassociated
wit