The White Lady of Hazelwood: A Tale of the Fourteenth Century - Emily Sarah Holt

The only authority hitherto discovered giving any hint of the history of Marguerite after this date, is a contemporary romance, Le Roman de la Comtesse de Montfort, which states that she retired to the Castle of Lucinio, near Vannes, and passed the rest of her life in tranquillity. Even Mrs Everett Green, in her Lives of the Princesses of England, accepted this as a satisfactory conclusion. It was, indeed, the only one known. But two entries on the public records of England entirely dissipate this comfortable illusion. On 26th September 1369, the Patent Roll states that “we allowed 105 pounds per annum to John Delves for the keeping of the noble lady, the Duchess of Bretagne; and we now grant to Isabel his widow, for so long a time as the said Duchess shall be in her keeping, the custody of the manor of Walton-on-Trent, value 22 pounds,” and 52 pounds from other lands. (Patent Roll, 43 Edward the Third, Part 2.) The allowance originally made had evidently been increased. The hapless prisoner, however, was not left long in the custody of Isabel Delves. She was transferred to that of Sir Godfrey Foljambe, whose wife, Avena Ireland, was daughter of Avena de Holand, aunt of Joan Duchess of Bretagne, the second wife of young Montfort. Lastly, a Post Mortem Inquisition, taken in 1374, announces that “Margaret Duchess of Bretagne died at Haselwood, in the county of Derby, on the 18th of March, 48 Edward the Third, being sometime in the custody of Godfrey Foljambe.” (Inquisitions of Exchequer, 47-8 Edward the Third, county Derbyshire).

It is therefore placed beyond question that the Countess of Montfort died a prisoner in England, at a date when her son had been for ten years an independent sovereign, and though on friendly terms with Edward the Third, was no longer a suppliant for his favour. Can it have occurred without his knowledge and sanction? He was in England when she died, but there is no indication that he ever went to see her, and her funeral, as is shown by the silence of the Wardrobe Rolls, was without any ceremony. Considering the character of the Duke—“violent in all his feelings, loving to madness, hating to fury, and rarely overcoming a prejudice once entertained”—the suspicion is aroused that all the early sacrifices made by his mother, all the gallant defence of his dominions, the utter self-abnegation and the tender love, were suffered to pass by him as the idle wind, in order that he might revenge himself upon her for the one occasion on which she prevented him from breaking his pledged word to King Edward’s daughter, and committing a mésalliance with Alix de Ponteallen. For this, or at any rate for some thwarting of his will, he seems never to have forgiven her.

Marguerite left two children—Duke Jean the Fourth, born 1340, died November 1, 1399: he married thrice,—Mary of England, Joan de Holand, and Juana of Navarre—but left no issue by any but the last, and by her a family of nine children, the eldest being only twelve years old when he died. Strange to say, he named one of his daughters after his discarded mother. His sister Jeanne, who was probably his senior, was originally affianced to Jean of Blois, the long-imprisoned son of Charles and Jeanne: she married, however, Ralph, last Lord Basset of Drayton, and died childless, November 8, 1403.