Wintoniensis armiger
Præsidet ad scaccarium,
Ad computandum impiger
Piger ad evangelium,
Regis revolvens rotulum;
Sic lucrum Lucam superat,
Marco marcam præponderat,
Et libræ librum subjicit.
Peter and the bishop of Norwich [see Grey, John de, d. 1214] were almost the only bishops left in England in 1211, when Innocent III threatened to depose John; and, despite Peter's known devotion to John, the papal envoy Pandulf [q. v.] imposed on him and the bishop of Norwich the duty of absolving John's subjects from their allegiance (Annales de Burtonia, i. 215). At the end of July 1213, after his surrender and absolution, the king went to Poitou, and left the realm in the charge of Peter and Geoffrey FitzPeter; but he directed them to follow the counsel of Langton (cf. Rog. Wend. ii. 82).
In October, on the death of Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, Peter succeeded to the office of justiciar, much to the disgust of the barons, who resented the promotion of an alien (Ralph Coggeshall, p. 168). Next year he acted as one of John's pledges for the payment of forty thousand marks to the church and for the observance of the peace with the archbishop (Rog. Wend.. ii. 101; Ann. Burt. i. 221). On 1 Feb. (Rymer, Hague edit. i. 59) he became guardian of the realm for a second time in the king's absence. He mainly occupied himself in sending help in men and munitions of war to the king, and the barons' anger turned to fury (Ann. Wav. ii. 281). In the crisis ending in the granting of the Great Charter which followed John's return on 19 Oct., he acted throughout as the king's trusted servant. After Innocent III had annulled the Great Charter, Peter, the abbot of Reading, and the legate Pandulf joined in urging Langton to promulgate the papal sentence of excommunication against the barons, and, on Langton's refusal, suspended him (Rog. Wend. ii. 154–5). They afterwards furnished Innocent III with the names of the barons to be personally excommunicated (Matt. Paris, Chronica Majora, ii. 643). The following year (1216) Peter was sent with others on the fruitless mission of seeking to induce Philip Augustus to prevent his son Louis from invading England (Ralph Coggeshall, p. 180). Among the French invader's first successes was the capture of Peter's castle of Odiham, after a stubborn defence of sixteen days (Rog. Wend. ii. 182–3). On 29 May, at Winchester, he excommunicated Louis and his adherents, but fled with the young king, Henry III, next day, on his approach (Ann. Wint. ii. 82).
At the coronation of Henry III at Gloucester, on 28 Oct., Peter, under the authority of the legate Gualo, placed the plain circlet of gold on the young prince's head and anointed him king (Rog. Wend. ii. 198). He was appointed Henry's guardian, either by the earl marshal, acting as custos regis et regni (Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, ed. P. Meyer, Soc. de l'Histoire de France, 1893–4, ii. 198), or, according to Peter's own claim, by the common consent (cf. Walt. Cov. ii. 233). His position as guardian did not prevent him from accompanying the royal army, and taking a decisive part in the relief of Lincoln (20 May 1217). The legate left the army on its march at Newark, leaving to Peter, as his deputy, the absolution and encouragement of the troops, who had assumed white crosses (Annales de Dunstaplia, iii. 49). ‘Learned in war,’ Peter led the fourth division of the army, and was entrusted by the earl marshal with the command of the arbalisters, whom he directed to kill the horses of the Frenchmen when they charged (Guillaume le Maréchal, ii. 222, 224). While reconnoitring he left his retinue, and alone penetrated to the castle of Lincoln, which was held by its lady against the French. After encouraging her with news of help, he ventured into the town, where he discovered a gate between the castle and town which was easy to batter down. He then returned to his army, and, after some fighting, brought it into the city (ib. ii. 230–2). Peter played a less glorious part in the battle of Dover (24 Aug. 1217). According to Matthew Paris (Chron. Maj. iii. 28) he, the earl marshal, and other barons, on the approach of the French fleet of Eustace the Monk, declined to take part in the attack, roughly telling Hubert de Burgh [q. v.] that ‘they were neither soldiers of the sea, pirates, nor fishermen; but he could go and die.’ The eulogistic metrical biography of the earl marshal does not corroborate the story. When Louis of France departed in 1217 he handed over the Tower of London to Peter (Fragment of Merton Chronicle in Pièces Justificatives to Ch.-Petit Dutaille's Louis VII, p. 515). In 1219, when the earl marshal lay on his deathbed, he commissioned his son to withdraw King Henry from Peter's custody and transfer him to the legate Pandulf. The bishop of Winchester resisted almost by force the execution of the order, but ultimately for the moment yielded up his charge (Guillaume le Maréchal, ii. 286–90). After the death of the earl marshal, however, on 14 May 1219, Peter continued to act as guardian of
