Burgh's policy of resumption of sheriffdoms and royal castles. Ranulf built Bolingbroke Castle near Spilsby in Lincolnshire around 1220, later the birthplace of King Henry IV, as well as Chartley Castle in Staffordshire, and Beeston Castle in Cheshire. Ranulf was briefly made castellan of Wallingford Castle. He made an alliance with Llywelyn the Great, whose daughter Elen married Ranulf's nephew and heir, John the Scot, in about 1222. De Blondeville's final years saw him acting as an elder statesman, witnessing the 1225 re-issue of Magna Carta, playing a prominent role in the dispute in 1227 over Forest Laws and, as a veteran, leading Henry III's army on the ill-fated Poitou expedition of 1230–1. He came to lead the campaign after the death of William Marshal (the younger). He showed vigour and made a thrust into Anjou, but by the end of June, the French had reached the Breton border. Ranulf concluded the campaign with a truce with the King of France for three years, to end in 1234. Earl Ranulf kept in sight his personal advantage. In 1220 some of his estates avoided carucage; in 1225 Aid was not levied in Cheshire; and in 1229 he successfully resisted the ecclesiastical tax collector. His only major failure, in old age, was not avoiding the 1232 levy of the fortieth on his lands. Ranulf's death Ranulf died at Wallingford on 26 October 1232, aged sixty. His viscera were buried at Wallingford Castle, his heart at Dieulacres Abbey, which he had founded, and the remainder of his body at St Werburg's in Chester. His various estates were divided between his four sisters Matilda (Maud), Mabel, Agnes (Alice) and Hawise as co-heirs. Ranulf's second sister Mabel and his eldest sister Matilda (Maud) shared the estates with their other sisters. Ranulf's third sister Agnes (Alice) inherited, along with a share in other estates with her sisters, lands between the Ribble and the Mercy rivers, Powis Castle near Welshpool in Wales, Chartley Castle, Staffordshire, and land at Bugbrooke, Northamptonshire. Ranulf's youngest sister Hawise inherited the honour and castle of Bolingbroke, other large estates such as Lindsey and Halland in Lincolnshire, and a share of other estates with her sisters. Prior to Ranulf's death, however, he had also made Hawise, his youngest sister, an inter vivos gift, after receiving dispensation from the Crown, of the Earldom of Lincoln. In April 1231 he granted her the title by