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At no time, indeed, did foreign influence appear more dominant in English politics than during the generation which saw Richard I surrender his kingdom to be held as a fief of the empire, and John surrender it to be held as a temporal fief of the papacy; or when, in the reign of Henry III, a papal legate, Gualo, administered England as a province of the Papal States; when a foreign freebooter was sheriff of six English shires; and when aliens held in their hands the castles and keys of the kingdom.
And at last he says: "As barbarism crept in they were no longer called Britons, but Welsh, a word derived either from Gualo, one of their dukes, or from Guales, their Queen, or else from their being barbarians.
The papal legate, the Cardinal Gualo, was the soul of the royalist cause. Louis and his adherents had been excommunicated, and not a single English bishop dared to join openly the foes of Holy Church. The most that the clerical partisans of the barons could do was to disregard the interdict and continue their ministrations to the excommunicated host.
Gualo withstood the temptation to adopt the method by which Innocent III. had ruled Sicily in the name of Frederick II. The king's mother was too unpopular and incompetent to anticipate the part played by Blanche of Castile during the minority of St. Louis. After the precedents set by the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, the barons took the matter into their own hands.
Innocent, who had once favoured a transfer of the English crown to Louis, must now oppose it. When he learned how far preparations for the expedition had gone, he sent a legate, Cardinal Gualo, to France to forbid any further step. Gualo was received by Philip and his son at Melun on April 25.
There the royalists rested three days, and received the blessing of Gualo and the bishops. They then set out towards Lincoln, commanded by the regent in person, the Earl of Chester, and the Bishop of Winchester, whom the legate appointed as his representative. The strong water defences of the rebel city on the south made it unadvisable for them to take the direct route towards it.
The marshal, who had forty-three years before dubbed the "young king" Henry a knight, then for a second time admitted a young king Henry to the order of chivalry. When the king had recited the coronation oath and performed homage to the pope, Gualo anointed him and placed on his head the plain gold circlet that perforce did duly for a crown.
He had been rewarded by his election to the bishopric of Norwich, but was recalled to Rome before his consecration, and only came back to England in the higher capacity of legate on December 3, 1218, after the recall of Gualo. He had been the cause of Langton's suspension, and there was probably no love lost between him and the archbishop.
In the following May Stephen Langton came back from exile and threw the weight of his judgment on the regent's side. Gradually the worst difficulties were surmounted. The administrative machinery once more became effective. A new seal was cast for the king, whose documents had hitherto been stamped with the seal of the regent. Order was so far restored that Gualo returned to Italy.
At his death John had driven from his side even the most loyal of his barons; but William Marshal had clung to him to the last, and with him was Gualo, the Legate of Innocent's successor, Honorius the Third. The position of Gualo as representative of the Papal overlord of the realm was of the highest importance, and his action showed the real attitude of Rome towards English freedom.
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