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In this simple deputation later writers have seen and perhaps by a gradual process the connection might be traced the first germ of legati a latere. But it must have been a very far-seeing eye which in Victor and Vincentius, the two unknown elders, representing their sick old bishop, could have detected the predecessors of Pandulf or of Wolsey.
Though Pandulf was with him, his vassalage had as yet brought little fruit in the way of aid from Rome; the commissioners whom he sent to plead his cause at the shire-courts brought back news that no man would help him against the charter that the barons claimed: and his efforts to detach the clergy from the league of his opponents utterly failed. The nation was against the king.
There was war also in the middle march, where in 1220 a royal army was assembled against Llewelyn; but Pandulf negotiated a truce, and the only permanent result of this effort was the fortification of the castle and town at Montgomery, which had become royal demesne on the extinction of the ancient house of Bollers a few years earlier.
The control of affairs passed into the hands of a new legate, Pandulf, of Stephen Langton who had just returned forgiven from Rome, and of the Justiciar, Hubert de Burgh. It was a time of transition, and the temper of the Justiciar was eminently transitional.
His self-effacement strengthened the position of the legate. Pandulf was no stranger to England. As subdeacon of the Roman Church he received John's submission in 1213, and stood by his side during nearly all his later troubles.
On the 15th of May 1213 he knelt before the legate Pandulf, surrendered his kingdom to the Roman See, took it back again as a tributary vassal, swore fealty and did liege homage to the Pope. In after times men believed that England thrilled at the news with a sense of national shame such as she had never felt before.
At last the English King surrendered his crown to the papal agent Pandulf, and, like Peter of Aragon, received it back as a vassal of the papacy, bound by an annual tribute. Nor were these the only kings that sought the support of the great Pope. The schismatic princes of the East vied in ardor with the Catholic princes of the West in their quest of Innocent's favor.
But this was the belief of a time still to come when the rapid growth of national feeling which this step and its issues did more than anything to foster made men look back on the scene between John and Pandulf as a national dishonour. We see little trace of such a feeling in the contemporary accounts of the time.
Not all the self-restraint of the legate could commend him to Langton, whose obstinate insistence upon his metropolitical authority forced Pandulf to procure bulls from Rome 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.
In September the Bishop of Winchester and Pandulf, representing the pope, suspended Archbishop Langton because of his refusal to enforce the papal sentences. By the end of the month the news reached England of Innocent's bull against the charter itself, declaring it null and void, and forbidding the king to observe it or the barons to require it to be kept under penalty of excommunication.
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