Roger Stafford, the impoverished heir male of the ancient Staffords, had been forced to surrender his barony to the king by a deed dated in the preceding year, a piece of injustice which is in the teeth of all modern conceptions of peerage law.
In the 13th century it became necessary for the legists to codify, as it were, the unwritten law, because the upheavals of the times necessitated the fixing of some rules in writing, and especially because it was necessary to oppose a definite custom of the kingdom to Frederick II., who sought, as king of Jerusalem, to take advantage of the want of a written law, to substitute his own conceptions of law in the teeth of the high court.
Theobald was followed (1240-1241) by Richard of Cornwall, the brother of Henry III., who, like his predecessor, had to sail in the teeth of papal prohibitions; but neither of the two achieved any permanent result, except the fortification of Ascalon.
Their eastern boundary, in the teeth of the spirit of the conventions, and with but scant observance of the letter, was by this means considerably extended.
Brand had arranged, in the teeth of the strongest protests from Kruger, that the Cape railway should extend to Bloemfontein and subsequently to the Vaal river.
