elder brother, Earl William, for whatever reason, extracted from his friend King Henry III a promise that should he not survive the campaign the king would not resist Richard's succession to the Marshal English lands, despite his being a sworn man of King Louis of France. As it happened the earl contracted an illness after his return from Brittany in 1231 and died childless on 6 April, leaving the earldom to Richard. Earl of Pembroke King Henry III was as good as his word to the late earl and readily welcomed Richard Marshal into his court on his arrival in England on 25 July 1231. It was the new earl's bad fortune that his brother's death helped clear the way for King John's exiled favourite, Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, to return to England, and plot the downfall of the justiciar, Hubert de Burgh. One the bishop's first victims on seizing power in 1233 was Gilbert Basset, one of the former followers of the late Earl William. Peter de Maulay, one of Des Roches's foreign followers, demanded a manor back which had passed in the meantime to Basset. The king backed Des Roches against Basset. When Basset resisted, the king abused him as a traitor and after a failed demonstration against the decision, Basset fled to the shelter of the southern March of Wales, where Earl Richard felt obliged to give his brother's ally shelter and adopt his cause. Richard was too suspicious to meet with the king at Gloucester in mid August 1233 for requested peace talks, and the Bishop of St Davids, one of the earl's cousins, was sent by the king to add to the pressure by threatening to break off their relationship as lord and man. As temperatures rose, Richard was faced by demands from royal bailiffs in September for his garrison to surrender Usk Castle which it did. For a while negotiations were attempted as the earl hesitated on the brink of open rebellion. But the die was cast in late September when Basset and his ally Richard Siward with what has to have been Earl Richard's consent made a spectacular cavalry raid across England, which at one point threatened London. The Marshal War Earl Richard may have been hesitant about committing to open rebellion, but once the decision was made, he did what he could to win. He took the strategic decision to