The Bishop of Winchester began to show his hand.  Between June 26 and July 11, nineteen of the thirty-five sheriffdoms were bestowed on Peter of Rivaux for life.  As Segrave was sheriff of five shires, and the bishop himself had acquired the shrievalty of Hampshire, this involved the transference of the administration of over two-thirds of the counties to the bishop’s dependants.  On the downfall of Hubert, Segrave became justiciar.  He was not the equal of his predecessors either in personal weight or in social position, and did not aspire to act as chief minister.  The appointment of a mere lawyer to the great Norman office of state marks the first stage in the decline, which before long degraded the justiciarship into a simple position of headship over the judges, the chief justiceship of the next generation.  Hubert’s offices and lands were divided among his supplanters.  Peter of Rivaux became keeper of wards and escheats, castellan of many castles on the Welsh march, and the recipient of even more offices and wardships in Ireland than in England.  The custody of the Gloucester earldom went to the Bishop of Winchester.  The last steps of the ministerial revolution were completed at the king’s Christmas court at Worcester.  There Rivaux, who had yielded up before Michaelmas most of his shrievalties, was made treasurer, with Passelewe as his deputy.  Of the old ministers only the chancellor, Ralph Neville, Bishop of Chichester, was suffered to remain in office.  Finally the king’s new advisers imported a large company of Poitevin and Breton mercenaries, hoping with their help to maintain their newly won position.  The worst days of John seemed renewed.

The Poitevin gang called upon Hubert to render complete accounts for the whole period of his justiciarship.  When he pleaded that King John had given him a charter of quittance, he was told that its force had ended with the death of the grantor.  He was further required to answer for the wrongs which Twenge’s bands had inflicted on the servants of the pope.  He was accused of poisoning William Earl of Salisbury, William Marshal, Falkes de Breaute, and Archbishop Richard.  He had prevented the king from contracting a marriage with a daughter of the Duke of Austria; he had dissuaded the king from attempting to recover Normandy; he had first seduced and then married the daughter of the King of Scots; he had stolen from the treasury a talisman which made its possessor invincible in war and had traitorously given it to Llewelyn of Wales; he had induced Llewelyn to slay William de Braose; he had won the royal favour by magic and witchcraft, and finally he had murdered Constantine FitzAthulf.