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he had a superior claim to the throne of France to his cousin Philip of Valois, to whom, in consequence of the inexorable Salic law, the regal succession had reverted. It is certain that Charles of Navarre had a nearer claim to the throne of his grandfather and uncle than Edward III., who only derived his descent from Isabella of France, the sister of these princes, and even if the Salic law had not existed, could have had no legal pretension to supersede the son of her brother's daughter. Edward was, however, a prince of consummate talent, and possessed of the means of asserting his claims by force of arms. Charles le Mauvais, having neither the resources nor the energies of the mighty Edward of England, made no open struggle, but played a treacherous game between him and Philip of Valois, in the hope of establishing himself by his crooked policy on the disputed throne of his grandfather.' His intrigues and crimes rendered the childhood of Joanna and her brethren a season of painful vicissitudes.

Joanna was contracted in the year 1380 to John, the heir of Castile, at the same time her eldest brother Charles was married to the sister of that prince. Political reasons induced Joanna's affianced bridegroom, on the death of the king his father, to break his engagement with her, and wed a princess of Arragon. Meantime, Charles le Mauvais, having embroiled himself with the regents of France, sent Joanna and her brothers, for greater security, to the castle of Breteuil, in Normandy. In the year 1381 they were captured and carried to Paris, where they were detained as hostages for their father's future conduct. Charles le Mauvais, finding his entreaties for their liberation fruitless, out of revenge suborned a person to poison both the regents. The emissary was detected and put to death, but Charles, the greater criminal of the two, was out of the reach of justice. Joanna and her brothers might have been imperilled by the lawless conduct of their father, had they not been in the hands of generous foes,-the brothers

1 He is accused, by contemporary historians, of practising the dark mysteries of the occult sciences in the unhallowed privacy of his own palace; and it is rtain that, as a poisoner, Charles of Navarre acquired an infamous celebrity throughout Europe.

2 Mezerai. Moreri.

of their deceased mother; but though detained for a considerable time as state-prisoners in Paris, they were affectionately and honourably treated by the court of France. Their liberation was finally obtained through the mediation of the king of Castile, whose sister, the bride of young Charles of Navarre, with unceasing tears and supplications wrought upon him to intercede for their release. Thus did Joanna of Navarre owe her deliverance to the prince to whom she had been betrothed.

In the year 1386, a marriage was negotiated between Joanna and John de Montfort, duke of Bretagne, surnamed 'the Valiant.' This prince, who was in the decline of life, had already been twice married.' On the death of his last duchess without surviving issue, the dukes of Berri and Burgundy, fearing the duke would contract another English alliance, proposed their niece, Joanna of Navarre, to him for a wife. The lady Jane of Navarre, Joanna's aunt, had married, seven years previously, the viscount de Rohan, a vassal and kinsman of the duke of Bretagne, and it was through the agency of this lady that the marriage between her new sovereign and her youthful niece was brought about.3 That this political union was, notwithstanding the disparity of years and the violent temper of the duke, agreeable to the bride, there is full evidence in the grateful remembrance which Joanna retained of the good offices of her aunt on this occasion, long after the nuptial tie between her and her mature lord had been dissolved by death, and she had entered into matrimonial engagements with Henry IV. of England. The duke of Bretagne having been induced, by the representations of the lady of Rohan and the nobles attached to the cause of France, to lend a favourable ear to the overtures for this alliance, demanded Joanna's hand of her father, and gave commission to Pierre de Lesnerac to man and appoint a vessel of war to convey the young princess to the shores of Bretagne. Pierre

4

1 First to Mary Plantagenet, the daughter of his royal patron and protector, Edward III., with whose sons he had been educated and taught the science of Mary dying without children in the third year of her marriage, he espoused, secondly, Jane Holland, the half-sister of Richard II. of England. Dom Morice, Chron. de Bretagne. Ibid.

war.

4 Rymer's Fœdera.

embarked on the 12th of June, 1386.

There is in Preuves

Historiques a memorial of the expenses of Pierre de Lesnerac for this voyage, specifying that he stocked the vessels with the provisions required for the royal bride and her train.

The contract of marriage between the duke of Bretagne and Joanna was signed at Pampeluna, August 25th, 1386. The king of Navarre engaged to give his daughter 120,000 livres of gold of the coins of the kings of France, and 6000 livres of the rents due to him on the lands of the viscount d'Avranches.' The duke, on his side, assigned to the princess, for her dower, the cities of Nantes and Guerrand, the barony of Rais, of Chatellenic de Touffon, and Guerche. Joanna then departed with Pierre de Lesnerac and her escort for Bretagne, and, on the 11th of September, 1386, was married to the duke of Bretagne at Saillé, near Guerrand, in the presence of the nobles of his court. A succession of feasts and pageants of the most splendid description were given by the duke of Bretagne at Nantes, in honour of his nuptials with his young bride."

In the beginning of the new year, February 1387, "in token of their mutual affection and delight in their union, the duke and duchess exchanged gifts of gold, sapphires, pearls, and other costly gems, with horses, falcons, and various sorts of wines. Joanna appears to have possessed the greatest influence over her husband's heart, and to have been treated by him with the fondest consideration on all occasions, although her father never paid the portion he had engaged to give her. The death of that prince, which took place the same year, was attended with circumstances of peculiar horror. He had long been suffering from a complication of maladies, and in the hope of recovering his paralytic limbs from their mortal chillness, he caused his whole person to be sewn up in cloths dipped in spirits of wine and sulphur. One night, after these bandages had been fixed, neither knife nor scissors being at hand, the careless attendants applied the flame of the candle to

1 Dom Morice, Chron. de Bretagne.

Dom Morice. Preuves Historiques.

4 Dom Morice, Chron. de Bretagne.

3 Froissart.

sever the thread with which the linen had been sewn; the spirits of wine instantly ignited, and the wretched Charles was burned so dreadfully, that, after lingering several days, he expired' January 1st, 1387, leaving his throne to his gallant patriotic son, Charles the Good, and his name to the general reprobation of all French chroniclers. The Bretons, who had boded no good either to themselves or to their duke from his connexion with this prince, far from sympathizing with the grief of their young duchess for the tragical death of her last surviving parent, rejoiced in the deliverance of the earth from a monster whose crimes had rendered him a disgrace to royalty.'

The last bad act of the life of Charles le Mauvais had been, to insinuate to his irascible son-in-law that Oliver de Clisson entertained a criminal passion for Joanna; and this idea excited in his mind a thirst for vengeance, which nearly involved him, and all connected with him, in ruin. In early life, John the Valiant and Clisson had been united in the tenderest ties of friendship, and the courage and military skill of Clisson had greatly contributed to the establishment of this prince's claims to the dukedom of Bretagne. Latterly, however, Clisson had opposed the duke's political predilections in favour of England, as injurious to their own country; and he had further caused great offence to the duke by ransoming, at his own expense, John count de Penthièvres, the rival claimant of the duchy, from his long captivity in England, and marrying him to his eldest daughter and co-heiress, Margaret de Clisson, just at the time when there appeared a prospect of the duchess Joanna bringing an heir to Bretagne.1·

Clisson was the commander of the armament preparing by France for the invasion of England, which was to sail from Treguer, in Bretagne, the king and regents of France imagining they had wholly secured the friendship of the duke by his marriage with their young kinswoman, Joanna of Navarre. Their plans were completely frustrated by the unexpected

1 Froissart.

2 Nouveau Dictionnaire Historique. Dom Morice, Chron. de Bretagne. 3 MS. Process against the king of Navarre, quoted by Guthrie. Guthrie calls Joanna, by mistake, Mary.

Froissart.

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