a settlement, but they had to settle for a temporary truce. In January 1188 Coutances took the cross when he pledged to go on Crusade along with King Henry and King Philip of France. At Whitsun in 1189, Coutances was a member of a commission appointed by the papal legate John of Anagni to arbitrate the dispute between King Henry II of England and his son, Richard, who was supported by King Philip II of France. Henry and Richard's conflict stemmed from Richard's desire to secure his inheritance to the throne of England, which he believed his father was trying to give to his youngest brother, John. The commission met near Le Mans. Richard and Philip insisted that Richard should be married to Philip's sister Alice, that Henry name Richard as Henry's heir, and that Richard's youngest brother John should go on crusade with Richard. Henry rejected those terms, and neither Philip nor Richard would negotiate, even under the legate's threat of an interdict on France. Service to King Richard Shortly after Richard took the throne he sought absolution for his sins in rebelling against his father, from Baldwin of Forde and Coutances. The two archbishops absolved Richard in a ceremony in Sees. Coutances also invested Richard as Duke of Normandy in a ceremony held in Rouen, before accompanying Richard to England, where he participated in the new king's coronation, on 3 September 1189. In 1189 Coutances held an ecclesiastical synod which legislated, among other things, that the clergy should not hold secular offices, even though Coutances himself had held and continued to hold such offices. On 9 November 1189 Richard appointed Coutances to a commission tasked with deciding the dispute between Baldwin of Forde and the monks of his cathedral chapter over Baldwin's plan to create a church dedicated to Thomas Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury, and to staff this church not with monks, but with canons. The monks of Canterbury Cathedral objected to Baldwin's plan, fearing that it was part of a plot to transfer the right of election from the monastic cathedral chapter to the new church's canons. Sitting on the commission with Coutances were Hugh de Puiset, the Bishop of Durham, Godfrey de Lucy, the Bishop of Winchester, Hubert Walter, the Bishop of Salisbury, Peter de Leia, the Bishop of St David's, Richard fitzNigel, the Bishop-elect of London, William Longchamp, the Bishop-elect of Ely, and