checked their mirth with the memorable exclamation, 'Honi soit qui mal y pense ;' and declared, moreover, that ere long sovereign honour should be rendered to that garter. In order to make good his word, he instituted the famous order of knighthood which marks the age of English chivalry.*

Foreign chronicles assert that when the Earl of Salisbury returned to England, the countess informed him of Edward's conduct to her, and that he, retiring secretly from the court, went to France, and delivered to Philip de Valois engagements of Olivier de Clisson and Godfrey de Harcourt to aid the English king, in consequence of which Clisson was beheaded and Harcourt banished. The statement is very improbable. At all events, Salisbury was present at the tournament held in the countess's honour, and played a conspicuous part in the lists. Indeed, his exertions would seem to have been imprudently severe; and he was so bruised and fatigued that he expired eight days later, and was buried in the church of the Grey Friars in London.

The Countess of Salisbury survived the brave earl several years. Out of his extensive possessions she was nobly provided for, and might successfully have aspired to a second husband. But she passed her widowhood in strict seclusion, and did not put herself in the way of making matrimonial conquests. The story of her having

*Nor,' says Ashmole, 'hath it happened otherwise with the order of the Golden Fleece; even that also hath met with the same fate; for it is said that its founder, entering one morning into the chamber of a most beautiful lady of Bruges (generally esteemed his mistress), found upon her toilet a fleece of low-country wool, whence some of his followers, taking occasion of sport, as of a thing unusually seen in a lady's chamber, he vowed that such as made it the subject of their derision, should never be honoured with a collar of the order thereof, which he intended to establish to express the love he bore that lady.'

captivated John, King of France, when he was brought prisoner to London after Poictiers, appears to be purely fabulous. Had the countess been alive at that period, she would have been a woman verging on fifty. But, in fact, she had at that date been some years in her grave. 1354, the Countess of Salisbury breathed her last.

In

From the union of William Montacute and Katherine Grandison sprang two sons, William and John, and four daughters-Sybil, wife of Edmund, son of the Earl of Arundel; Philippa, wife of Roger Mortimer, Earl of March; Elizabeth, wife of Giles, Lord Badlesmer; and Agnes, who appears to have died unmarried. Her eldest son William succeeded his father as Earl of Salisbury, and was one of the heroes of Cressy; and her second son, John, who was a man of great note in his day, wedded the heiress of the Monthermers, and, like his brother, fought at Cressy. When William died without heirs, John Montacute, his nephew, succeeded to the earldom, and made himself famous as one of the Lollards. He espoused Maude, daughter of Sir Adam Francis, a citizen of London, who had previously been the wife of Sir John Aubrey and Sir Alan Burchall. As Maude's husband, he became proprietor of the manor of Shenley, and was 'so transported with zeal,' says the chronicler,' that he caused all the images that were in the chapel at Shenley, there set up by Sir John Aubrey and Sir Alan Burchal, his wife's former husbands, or any of their predecessors, to be taken down and thrown into obscure places; only the image of St. Katherine, in regard that many did affect it, he gave leave that it should stand in his bakehouse.'*

Thomas Montacute, eldest son of this Lollard nobleman, was the last Earl of Salisbury of his name. He first espoused Alice Holand, a daughter of the Earl of Kent, and after her death, Alice Chaucer, a granddaughter of the

* Dugdale's Baronage.

H

poet. By his marriage with Alice Holand, he had one daughter, who became the wife of Richard Neville, a younger son of the Earl of Westmoreland, and mother of Richard Neville, 'the stout Earl' of Warwick and Salisbury, who, on Easter Sunday, 1471, fell fighting against the fourth Edward at Barnet.

Among the grants with which Edward III. rewarded the valiant and loyal services of the Earl of Salisbury, was Bisham, in Berks. At this place, which, in the days of the crusades, was a preceptory of the knights of the Temple, the earl founded a religious house for monks of the Augustine order, and within the abbey of Bisham, whither probably the bones of her husband had been removed from the Grey Friars, London, the Countess of Salisbury was laid at rest. Afterwards her eldest son, by his will, dated 1397, bequeathed his body to be buried at Bisham, and ordered 'that his executors should bestow five hundred marks for furnishing the structure to make a tomb there for his father and mother.' Other descendants of the Countess of Salisbury were interred at Bisham, in that grey old building hard by the river Thames. Thither Warwick, the kingmaker,' and his brother, Lord Montacute, were borne from the field of Barnet; and thither the king-maker's grandson, Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, after his judicial murder by Henry VII. in the Tower. At the period of the Reformation, and the dissolution of monasteries, the abbey of Bisham was destroyed; and nothing remains to mark the spot where repose the ashes of Katherine the Fair, or of the 'proud setter-up and puller-down of kings.'

115

ONE

Joan, Countess of Montfort.

NE day, late in the autumn of 1341, when an armistice had secured a cessation of hostilities between Edward, King of England, and Philip of Valois, an exciting scene was enacted at Rennes, in Brittany. A lady, young and beautiful, holding a boy in her hand, and looking every inch a heroine, appeared in the midst of the knights and fighting men who guarded the city, and in eloquent and inspiriting language exhorted them to maintain the rights of her husband, who had just been taken prisoner by the French. The lady was the Countess of Montfort; the boy was her son; and the feudal magnate whom the French had led into captivity was John, Earl of Montfort, who, in opposition to Charles of Blois, asserted his claim to be Duke of Brittany.

It appears that Arthur, Duke of Brittany, who lived at the beginning of the fourteenth century, was twice married. By his first wife, a daughter of Guy, Count of Limoges, he had two sons, John and Guy; by his second wife, Jolande, daughter of the Count of Dreux, and widow of Alexander, King of Scotland, he had one son, John, who being descended, on the female side, from Simon de Montfort, the conqueror of the Albigenses, figured as Earl of Montfort. John, who was Duke of Brittany, died in April, 1341, without issue; having previously taken measures to exclude his half-brother from the duchy. In fact, in spite of the interpretation so recently given to the Salic law, he had nominated as his heir, Joan, daughter of his brother Guy, and, in order to secure her succession, united her in marriage to Charles

of Blois, who, being a nephew of Philip of Valois, was supposed to have sufficient influence to make good his young wife's claim to the province.

Everything seemed favourable to the claims of Charles of Blois and his spouse, when the Duke of Brittany expired at Caen, and was laid at rest in the church of the Carmelites of Ploermel. But appearances proved deceptive. The Earl of Montfort had wedded Joan, sister of Louis, Count of Flanders; and perhaps, of all women then living, the Countess of Montfort was the least likely to allow her husband to submit tamely to exclusion from his inheritance. Prompt measures were adopted to vindicate his rights, and no sooner did he receive intelligence of his elder brother's death, than, accompanied by the countess, he set out for Nantes, which was the capital of Brittany, and took possession of the city. After holding a court and receiving the homage of the inhabitants, he proceeded to Limoges, and, pursuing his career, made himself master of Brest, Rennes, Hennebon, Vannes, Aurai, and Goy la Forest, and found himself addressed everywhere as Duke of Brittany.

So far all went prosperously. But meanwhile Charles of Blois was not quite inactive. Hastening to Paris, he laid his case before Philip of Valois, complained that his wife's inheritance had been illegally seized by her uncle, and represented that Montfort had passed over to England, and done homage for the duchy to King Edward. Naturally enough, anxious to sec his nephew Duke of Brittany, Philip convoked the twelve peers of France, to decide on the rival claims, and, at the same time, summoned Montfort to appear before the Court.

Montfort evinced no reluctance to obey the summons. Leaving Nantes, where, with the countess, he had been celebrating his triumphs, the earl, with four hundred horsemen, rode towards Paris. Having entered the French capital, and repaired to the palace, he presented himself to Philip of Valois and the twelve peers.