heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

208 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
The building itself was destroyed by lightning many years ago, and
rebuilt in
memory of the safe return of Prince Charles, afterwards Charles I.,
from his expedition to Spain ; but the arms of the Duke of Orleans still
adorn the porch.
He remained at Groombridge for some years,
and was then removed
to the Tower, where he completed his long captivity in England of twentyfive
years. Broken and defeated, France could not easily raise so large a
sum as
300,000 crowns.
But Henry V. really preferred his prisoner to the money, for he had
married Katherine of Valois, the sister of the young widow who had
rejected him, and had thus become brother-in-law to his prisoner, the
Duke of Orleans. If the Dauphin died, Henry was assured of the Crown
of France, should Charles of Orleans die without male issue ;
and hence,
to gain that summit of the ambition of the Plantagenets, his relative was
detained, if not "in durance vile," at least in durance disagreeable. For
he said in after years to his son-in-law, the Duke d'Ale^on,
" I have had
"experience myself; and in my prison in England, for the weariness,
" danger, and displeasure in which I there lay, I have many a time wished
" that I had been slain in the battle when they took me." *
Henry of Agincourt had been dead many years, and the French had
recovered nearly the whole of France (thanks to Joan of Arc and to the
duke's natural brother, the famous Bastard of Orleans) before Charles's
day of liberation came.
One by one the sons of Charles VI. dropped off, leaving
no heir to
the Crown, and his life became every year more precious. At length
deliverance was at hand from a quarter least expected. The vengeance
of God had fallen upon the murderer of the late Duke of Orleans.
In 1419 "John the Fearless" had himself been murdered in retaliation
by Tanneguy Deuchatel, at Montereau, in the very presence of the Dauphin,
afterwards Charles VII. f His son, "Philip the Good," resolved to
pay the ransom of the man whose father had been assassinated by his
father, and fallen a victim to the house of Burgundy. And he did not
rest until, some twenty years after, his noble and generous purpose was
carried out, and Charles of Orleans was free.
When he arrived in Paris he found his second wife, Duchess Bona,
dead ; his daughter, whom he had left a child of five years old, a woman
of thirty. Reasons of state compelled him reluctantly to begin life again.
He married, for his third wife, Mary of Cleves, by whom he had a son,
called Louis in remembrance of his father, who lived to mount the throne
of France, and who is known in history as Louis XII.
' Mrs. Streatfeild.
f Guizot.