Honorius sent his chaplain Otto to
England, but the nuncio found it impossible to modify the policy of the
advisers of the king. Falkes went back from Italy to Troyes, where he
waited for a year in the hope that his sentence would be reversed. At
last Otto gave up his cause in despair, and devoted himself to the more
profitable work of exacting money from the English clergy. Falkes died
in 1226. With him disappears from our history the lawless spirit which
had troubled the land since the war between John and his barons. The
foreign adventurers, of whom he was the chief, either went back in
disgust to their native lands, or, like Peter de Mauley, became loyal
subjects and the progenitors of a harmless stock of English barons. The
ten years of storm and stress were over. The administration was once
more in English hands, and Hubert enjoyed a few years of well-earned
power.
New difficulties at once arose. The defeat of the feudalists and their
Welsh allies involved heavy special taxation, and the king's honour
required that an effort should be made both to wrest Poitou from Louis
VIII.
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