A MORE PARTICULAR ACCOUNT OF THE FUNERAL SERVICES PERFORMED AT PARIS AND ST DENIS, ON THE DEATH OF KING CHARLES VII. OF FRANCE.
On Magdalen-day, in the year 1461, as I have before mentioned, died king Charles VII. of France, at the castle of Mehun sur Yevre, whose soul may God pardon and receive in mercy!
On the following Tuesday, a solemn funeral service was performed for him in the church of St Denis, such as has been usually performed yearly for Louis le gros, formerly king of France.
On the Wednesday, the 5th of August, the body of the said king was brought, at ten o'clock at night, to Paris, but left, without the walls, in the church of Nôtre Dame des Champs. Four lords of the court of parliament held the four corners of the pall, clothed in scarlet mantles: many other lords also supported the pall, dressed in crimson robes.
The body was, on the morrow, put on a litter covered with a very rich cloth of gold, and borne by six score salt porters. The duke of Orleans, the count of Angoulême, the count of Eu, and the count of Dunois, were the principal mourners, all four on horseback. They were followed by the car which had brought the body from Mehun, having a black velvet pall thrown across it, which was covered with a white cross of very rich figured velvet. This car was drawn by five horses with trappings of black figured velvet that reached to the ground, and covered them so completely that their eyes only were to be seen. After the car came six pages in black velvet, with hoods of the same, mounted on horses with trappings similar to those of the car. Before the body was the patriarch, then bishop of Avranches, who performed the services at Nôtre Dame and at St Denis, as shall be mentioned hereafter. The clergy of Nôtre Dame, and of all the other parishes of Paris, led the procession; then came the rector of the university, followed by the members of the chamber of accounts dressed in black; then those of the court of requests, the provost of Paris, the court of the Châtelet, and the burghers of Paris, in regular order. In the front of all were the four orders of mendicant monks. The whole was closed by an innumerable quantity of people from Paris and other parts.
There were two hundred wax tapers, of four pounds weight each, borne by two hundred men dressed in black. The church of Nôtre Dame was hung with black silk, besprinkled with flowers de luce.
The body of the king was placed in the middle of the choir, when a service for the dead was performed, and the vigils chaunted. On the morrow, Friday, the 7th day of August, mass was celebrated by the patriarch; and about three o'clock in the afternoon of that day, the lords before named attended the body, which was carried to La Croix-ou-Fiens, which is between La Chappelle-St-Denis and where the Lendit-fair is holden, when a desperate quarrel arose about carrying the body to the church, and it remained there a long time; at length the burghers of St Denis took up the bier as it was, and wanted to carry the body to Saint Denis, because the salt-porters had left it on the road, by reason of a refusal to pay them the sum of ten livres, which they demanded. The master of the horse to the king having promised payment of this sum, they carried the body into the choir of the church of St Denis,—but it was eight o'clock before it arrived there. At this hour, vespers for the dead only were chaunted for the king, and on the morrow, at six in the morning, matins, namely, Dirige, &c.