1399.] First meeting with Henry of Bolingbroke. 467 break the marriage, by inducing the heir of Alençon to offer to marry he princess with a smaller dower than the heir of Lancaster was to have eceived with her." Marie was espoused to John of Alençon, June 6th, 1396; and a peculiar animosity always subsisted between her usband and the defrauded Henry of Monmouth. The heir of Bretagne ras married to Joanna of France the same year. The espousals were olemnized 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 nduce King Richard to restore to him the earldom of Richmond, which ad been granted by Richard I. to his first queen, Anne of Bohemia, and fter her death to Jane of Bretagne, the sister of the duke, who was married to Raoul Basset, an English knight. Richard restored the earllom 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 widower 2 at that time; 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 his 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 Actes de Bretagne. 3 His deceased wife was Mary de Bohun, daughter and coheiress of the earl of Hereford, hereditary constable of England. She Was great-granddaughter to Edward I, and Eleanora of Castile, and the richest heiress in England, excepting her sister, who was married to Henry's uncle, Gloucester. She had possessions to the amount of forty thousand 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.' "1 When the earl of Derby received this message, he immediately set forward for the dominions of the duke of Bretagne. The duke 2 met the earl at Nantes, and received him and his company with great joy. It was on this occasion that Henry first saw, and 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 Bretagne "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 994 voyage." 3 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-in-law, 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 1 Froissart. 2 Ibid. 3 lbid. 4 Ibid. 1399.] Joanna regent of Bretagne. 469 things were ready for his departure.1 Henry was conveyed by three of the duke's vessels of war, freighted with men-at-arms and cross-bows. This royal adventurer, the banished Lancaster, was the first person who gave to the myosotis arvensis, or "forget-me-not," its emblematic and poetic meaning, by uniting it, at the period of his exile, on his collar of SS, with the initial letter of his mot, or watchword, Souveigne vous de moy; thus rendering it the symbol of remembrance, and, like the subsequent fatal roses of York, Lancaster, and Stuart, the lily of Bourbon, and the violet of Napoleon, an historical flower. Poets and lovers have adopted the sentiment which makes the blue myosotis plead the cause of the absent by the eloquence of its popular name, "forget-me-not ;" but few indeed of those who, at parting, exchange this simple touching appeal to memory, are aware of the fact, that it was first used as such by a royal Plantagenet prince, who was, perhaps, indebted to the agency of this mystic blossom for the crown of England. We know not if Henry of Lancaster presented a myosotis to the duchess of Bretagne at his departure from the court of Vannes; but he afforded a convincing proof that his fair hostess was not forgotten by him, when a proper season arrived for claiming her remembrance. The assistance rendered by the duke of Bretagne to the future husband of his consort, was the last important action of his life. The duke breathed his last November 1st, 1399; and Joanna, having been appointed by him as regent for their eldest son, the young duke, with the entire care of his person, assumed the reins of government in his name. Her first public act, after the funeral of her deceased lord had been solemnized in the cathedral-church of Nantes, was a public reconciliation with Sir Oliver Clisson, his son-in-law, count de Penthièvres, and the rest of the disaffected nobles who had been at open variance with her deceased lord. She employed the prelates, and some of the most prudent of the nobles of Bretagne, to mediate this pacification; and Clisson, with the rest of the malcontents, swore to obey the widowed duchess during the minority of their young duke, her son. This treaty was signed and sealed at the castle of Blein, 1st of January, 1400. Clisson's power in the duchy was so considerable, owing to his vast possessions there, his great popularity, and his influence as constable of France, that he might have been a most formidable enemy to the young duke, if the duchess-regent had not succeeded in conciliating him. When Joanna had exercised the sovereign authority as regent for her son a year and a half, the young duke, accompanied by her, made his solemn entrance into Rennes, March 22, 1401, and took the oaths in the presence of his prelates and nobles, having entered his twelfth year. He then proceeded to the cathedral, and, according to the custom of the 1 Froissart. dukes his predecessors, passed the night in prayer before the great alta of St. Peter. On the morrow, having heard mass, he was knighted by Clisson, and then conferred knighthood on his younger brothers, Arthur and Jules; after which he was invested with the ducal habit, circlet and sword by his prelates and nobles, and carried in procession through the city. After his inauguration, the young duke mounted his horse and, attended by his nobles, returned to the castle of Rennes, where a royal banquet had been prepared. The duchess-regent1 put her so in possession of the duchy at so tender an age, as a preliminary to her union with the new king of England, Henry of Lancaster. The visit of that prince to the court of Vannes in the year 1399, had made an indelible impression on the heart of Joanna, and on the death of her husband, John the Valiant, she determined to become his wife. Although the learned historian of France, M. Michelet, affirms that very soon after the death of the duke of Bretagne, the fair widow declared she would marry Henry, it is certain that she not only acted with punctilious respect to the memory of her defunct lord, by allowing upwards of two years to elapse before she took any steps for exchanging her widow's veil for the queenly diadem of England, but she kept her intentions in favour of Henry a profound secret till she could cajole the pope of Avignon, to whose communion she belonged, into giving her a general dispensation to marry any one she pleased within the fourth degree of consanguinity, without naming the person; for besides the great political obstacles which opposed themselves to her union with Henry, they were members of rival churches,-Henry, who had been educated in Wickliffite principles, having now attached himself to the party of Boniface, the pope of Rome, styled the anti-pope by those who denied his authority. Joanna's agents negotiated this difficult arrangement so adroitly, that the bull was executed according to her desire, March 20, 1402, without the slightest suspicion being entertained by the orthodox court of Avignon that the schismatic king of England was the mysterious person within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity, whom Benedict had so obligingly granted the duchessdowager of Bretagne liberty to espouse.3 When Joanna had thus outwitted her pope, she despatched a trusty squire of her household, named Antoine Riczi, to conclude her treaty of marriage with king Henry. After the articles of this matrimonial alliance were signed, Joanna and her royal bridegroom were espoused, by procuration, at the palace of Eltham, on the third day of April, 1402, Antoine Riczi acting as the proxy of the bride. What motive could have induced the lovely widow of John the Valiant, of Bretagne, to choose a male representative on this interesting occasion, it is difficult 1 Alain Bouchard. Dom Morice. 2 Lobineau. Preuves Hist. de Bretagne. 3 Dom Morice. 1402.] Represented by a male proxy. 471 to surmise; but it is certain that Henry plighted his nuptial troth1 to the said Antoine Riczi, and placed the bridal ring on his finger as the representative of his absent bride.2 This act was performed with great solemnity in the presence of the archbishop of Canterbury, the king's half-brothers, the Beaufort princes, the earl of Worcester, lord chamberlain of England, and other officers of state. Riczi had previously produced a letter from the duchess Joanna, empowering him to contract matrimony with the king of England in her name, on which the trusty squire, having received king Henry's plight, pronounced that of Joanna in these words :-"I, Antoine Riczi, in the name of my worshipful lady, Joanna, the daughter of Charles, lately king of Navarre, duchess of Bretagne, and countess of Richmond, take you, Henry of Lancaster, king of England and lord of Ireland, to be my husband, and thereto I, Antoine, in the spirit of my said lady, plight you my troth."3 No sooner was this ceremony concluded, than the rigid canonists represented to Joanna that she would commit a deadly sin by completing her marriage with a prince attached to the communion of pope Boniface. The case, however, not being without precedent, the court of Avignon quieted the conscience of the duchess, under the idea that great advantages might be derived from her forming an alliance with the king of England, whose religious principles had hitherto been anything but stable. She obtained permission, therefore, to live with the schismatic Catholics, and even outwardly to conform to them by receiving the sacraments from their hands, provided she remained firmly attached to the party of Benedict XIII.5 The prospect of a marriage between Joanna and the new king of England, Henry of Lancaster, was contemplated with great uneasiness by the court of France. Henry was the brother of the queens of Castile and Portugal: in addition to these powerful family connexions, he would become closely allied with the sovereigns of Navarre and Bretagne, and thus enjoy every facility of invading France, if he felt disposed to renew the pretensions of his renowned grandsire, Edward III., to the sovereignty of that realm. The royal dukes, Joanna's uncles, endeavoured, by every means in their power, to dissuade her from a marriage so full of peril to France, but in vain. At length, her intention of taking the young duke, her son, and the rest of her children with her to England, and placing them under the tutelage of her second husband transpiring, the duke of Burgundy considered it necessary to undertake a journey to her court, to try the effect of his personal eloquence in turning her from this design. He arrived at Nantes on the first of October, and sent to announce his advent to the duchess Joanna, who welcomed him in proper form, invited him to dinner, and regaled him sumptuously.. 1 Lobineau. 2 Acts of the Privy Council, by Sir Harris Nicolas. 3 MS. Chron. of Nantes. |