Status Updates From William Marshal: Knighthood...

The Marshal (who inherited little in the way of a landed following) was one of the first great magnates in England that we know created a political connection not based on landed links and traditional allegiance, but on political interest & a more subtle forms of reward, an 'affinity' as the Marshal's contemporaries were already calling it. pg 144

This is the importance of the Irish problem for Marshal. It tested his capacity as not other episode of his life. He had to fend off the king with one hand & preserve his lordship in Leinster with the other. Here we find the first signs that the man had some streak of greatness in him; that he was more than a simpering courtier. In the Leinster years we discover why the Marshal came in the end to rule England. pg 101