musing some time, he told the valet he would consider his answer, and ordered him to be conducted to an apartment by himself. The attendants of the lord of Clisson were amazed at what they saw and heard, for never before had any one come from the duke of Bretagne without being immured in the deepest dungeon.' Clisson wrote, in return, that if the duke wished to see him, he must send his son as a pledge, who would be taken the greatest care of till his return. This letter was sealed and given to the valet, who hastened back to the duke at Vannes. On receiving the letter from the lord of Clisson, he paused after reading it, then exclaimed,-"I will do it; for since I mean to treat amicably with him, every cause of distrust must be removed." He then said to the viscount Rohan, "Viscount, you and the lord de Monboucher shall carry my little son to the château Joscelin, and bring back with you the lord de Clisson, for I am determined to make up our quarrel." Some days, however, elapsed before the duchess could resolve to part with her boy. At length her earnest desire of composing the strife overcame her maternal fears, and she permitted her kinsman, Rohan, to conduct the princely child to castle Joscelin. When Clisson saw the boy, and perceived the confidence the duke had placed in him, he was much affected. The result was, that he and the duke's envoy set out together from castle Joscelin, carrying the boy with them, for sir Oliver said, "He would give him back to his parents, as henceforth he should never distrust the duke, after the trial he had made of him." Such generosity was shown on both sides, that it was no wonder a firm peace was the consequence. Sir Oliver dismounted at the convent of Dominicans, the place where the interview was appointed to take place. When the duke of Bretagne found that sir Oliver had brought back his son, he was highly delighted with his generosity and courtesy, and hastening to the convent, shut himself up in a chamber with sir Oliver. Here they conversed some time; then they went privately down the garden, and entered a small boat that conveyed them to an empty ship anchored in the river, and, 1 Froissart. when at a distance from their people, they conferred for a long time. Their friends thought all the time they were conversing in the convent chamber. When they had arranged all matters thus secretly, they called their boatman, who rowed them to the church of the Dominicans, which they entered by a private door through the garden and cloisters, the duke holding sir Oliver by the hand all the time. All who saw them thus were well pleased; indeed, the whole of Bretagne was made very happy when this peace was made public; but, owing to the extreme precautions of the duke, no one knew what passed during the conference on the river. Such is the very interesting account given by Froissart of the reconciliation of these two deadly enemies. The Breton chroniclers attribute the pacification wholly to the influence of Joanna, an application having been made to her by viscount Rohan, the husband of her aunt, praying her good offices in mediating a peace between her lord and the rebel peers of Bretagne. In compliance with this request, she prevailed on the duke to raise the siege of Joscelin, and to make those concessions to Clisson which produced the happy result of putting an end to the civil war. Clisson agreed to pay ten thousand francs of gold to the duke, and, with the rest of the Breton barons, associated the duchess of Bretagne in the solemn oaths of homage, which they renewed to their sovereign on the 28th of December, 1393, at Nantes.2 In the same year proposals of marriage were made by Joanna's future husband, Henry of Lancaster, earl of Derby, to her niece, the young princess of Navarre, but the negotiation came to nothing.3 The following year, Marie of Bretagne, Joanna's eldest daughter, was contracted to the eldest son of this prince, afterwards Henry V. The duke of Bretagne engaged to give Marie one hundred and fifty thousand francs in gold for her portion. "The castle of Brest, though at that time in the possession of the English, was, at the especial desire of the duchess Joanna, appointed for the solemnization of the 2 Dom Morice. 'Le Baud, Chron. de Briocense. nuptials, and the residence of the youthful pair; but after the cession of this important town had been guaranteed by Richard II., the king of France contrived to break the marriage, by inducing the heir of Alençon to offer to marry the princess with a smaller dower than the heir of Lancaster was to have received with her." Marie was espoused to John of Alençon, June 26th, 1396, and a peculiar animosity always subsisted between her husband and the defrauded Henry of Monmouth. The heir of Bretagne was married to Joanna of France the same year. The espousals were solemnized at the hôtel de St. Pol by the archbishop of Rouen, in the presence of the king and queen of France, the queen of Sicily, the duke and duchess of Bretagne, and the dukes of Berri and Burgundy. The duke of Bretagne undertook a voyage to England, in 1398, to induce king Richard to restore to him the earldom of Richmond, which had been granted by Richard I. to his first queen, Anne of Bohemia, and after her death to Jane of Bretagne, the sister of the duke, who was married to Raoul Basset, an English knight. Richard restored the earldom to the duke, and gave him an acquittance of all his debts to him; and the duke did the same by him at Windsor, 23rd of April, 1398. "It was time," says Dom Morice, with some naïveté, "that these princes should settle their accounts together, for the one was on the point of deposition, the other of death." It was in the following year that Joanna first became acquainted with her second husband, Henry of Bolingbroke, during the period of his banishment from his native land. Henry was not only one of the most accomplished warriors and statesmen of the age in which he lived, but remarkable for his fine person and graceful manners. He was a widower2 at that time, 1 Actes de Bretagne. His deceased wife was Mary de Bohun, daughter and co-heiress of the earl of Hereford, hereditary constable of England. She was great-grand-daughter to Edward I. and Eleanora of Castile, and the richest heiress in England, excepting ber sister, who was married to Henry's uncle, Gloucester. She had possessions to the amount of forty thousand nobles per annum, arising from several earldoms and baronies. She was devoted to a conventual life by her interested brother-inaw, who had her in wardship, but evaded that destiny by marrying Henry of Lancaster, who, by the contrivance of her aunt, carried her off from Pleshy, and and the vindictive jealousy of his cousin, Richard II. of England, had exerted itself successfully to break the matrimonial engagements into which he was about to enter with the lady Marie of Berri, the daughter of Charles VI.'s uncle. This princess was cousin-german to Joanna, and in all probability beloved by Henry, if we may form conclusions from the peculiar bitterness with which he ever recurred to Richard's arbitrary interference for the prevention of this marriage. Charles VI. of France, though he entertained a personal friendship for Henry, whom he regarded as an ill-treated man, had requested him to withdraw from his court, as his residence there was displeasing to king Richard. The duke of Burgundy, willing to please Richard, would not allow Henry to pass through his dominions, and attempted to have him arrested on his road to Boulogne.' Henry took refuge in the territories of Bretagne, but, aware of the close family connexion of the duke with Richard II., he rested at Blois, and sent one of his knights to Vannes to ascertain whether John the Valiant was disposed to receive him at his court. John was piqued at the mistrust implied by Henry's caution; for, says Froissart, "he was much attached to him, having always loved the duke of Lancaster, his father, better than the other sons of Edward III. Why,' said he to the knight, has our nephew stopped on the road? It is foolish; for there is no knight whom I would so gladly see in Bretagne as my fair nephew the earl of Derby. Let him come and find a hearty welcome." " When the earl of Derby received this message, he immediately set forward for the dominions of the duke of Bretagne. The duke3 met the earl at Nantes, and received him and his company with great joy. It was on this occasion married her, 1384. She died in the bloom of life in 1394, leaving six infants; namely, the renowned Henry V., Thomas duke of Clarence, John duke of Bedford, regent of France, and Humphrey duke of Gloucester, protector of England, Blanche, married to the count Palatine, and Philippa to Eric king of Denmark, the unworthy heir of Margaret Waldemar. It was from Mary Bohun that Henry derived his title of duke of Hereford. Though her decease happened so many years before his elevation to the royal dignity, he caused masses to be said for the repose of her soul, under the title of queen Mary, by the monks of Sionabbey, which he founded after he came to the throne of England. 'Michelet's History of France, vol. iv. p 20. 2 2 Froissart. 8 Ibid. that Henry first saw, and, if the chronicles of Bretagne may be relied on, conceived that esteem for the duchess Joanna, which afterwards induced him to become a suitor for her hand. We find he was accustomed to call the duke of Bretague "his good uncle;" in memory of his first marriage with Mary of England;' and it is very probable that, in accordance with the manners of those times, he addressed the duchess Joanna, per courtesy, by the title of aunt. The archbishop of Canterbury accompanied Henry to the court of Bretagne incognito, having just arrived from England with an invitation to him from the Londoners and some of the nobles attached to his party, urging him to invade England, for the ostensible purpose of claiming his inheritance, the duchy of Lancaster. Henry asked the duke of Bretagne's advice. "Fair nephew," replied the duke, "the straightest road is the surest and best: I would have you trust the Londoners. They are powerful, and will compel king Richard, who, I understand, has treated you unjustly, to do as they please. I will assist you with vessels, men-at-arms, and cross-bows. You shall be conveyed to the shores of England in my ships, and my people shall defend you from any perils you may encounter on the voyage." Whether Henry of Lancaster was indebted to the good offices of the duchess Joanna for this favourable reply from the duke, history has not recorded. But as John the Valiant had hitherto been the fast friend, and, as far as his disaffected nobles would permit, the faithful ally of his royal brother-inlaw, Richard II., and now that his suzerain, Charles VI. of France, was united in the closest bonds of amity with that prince, and the young heir of Bretagne was espoused to the sister of his queen, it must have been some very powerful influence, scarcely less indeed than the eloquence of a bosom counsellor, that could have induced him to furnish Richard's mortal foe with the means of invading England. The purveyances of "aspiring Lancaster" were, however, prepared at Vannes, and the duke of Bretagne came thither with his guest when all things were ready for his departure.3 Henry 1 Froissart. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. |