At all events, this syllogism was so convincing to Gloucester himself, that like a submissive son of the Church, he turned round and married his mistress Eleanor Cobham.
Nemesis followed up that marriage, and Jaqueline was avenged. A few years later, the duchess Eleanor was arraigned for witchcraft and made to do public penance at Saint Pauls. Humphrey was implicated in his wife’s sorceries; but it would not answer to make a prince of the blood do penance at Saint Pauls, so he was found one morning, dead in his bed.
As for his murderer, stop here O reader! turn to your Shakspeare, Henry VI. part II. act III. scene III.; and stand at the bedside of the dying cardinal—that scene of which Doctor Johnson says “the profound can imagine nothing beyond”—that scene of which Schlegel says “it is beyond praise; no other poet has ever drawn aside the curtain of eternity in so awful a manner”—that scene which John Richard Green says “is taken bodily from some older dramatist!”[11]
The annulment of Jaqueline’s English marriage, threw her back into the arms of the duke of Brabant who however, did not long enjoy the wife thus restored to him. He died, and his estates fell to his brother Philip who died soon after, and so suddenly that Philip of Burgundy who was, or rather claimed to be the next heir, was suspected of having poisoned him. But the fifteenth century had fairly set in, and knowledge had revived. Two intelligent surgeons cut open the dead Philip, to see what ailed him, and found in his stomach an ulcer which sufficiently explained his demise, so that Philip-the-good escaped passing into history as a poisoner.
Jaqueline was reduced to extremities. Philip had cornered her up in Zealand, and set to watch over her a lieutenant of his named Philip Borssele who had risen in his service by his business talents. Jaqueline the inheritor of some of the richest provinces in Europe, was so straitened that she had not money enough to defray her housekeeping. One day her mother had sent her a present of a span of horses, and she could not find a single florin in her purse to give as drink-money to the grooms who had brought them. One of her attendants suggested to her to apply to Borssele who always had money to lend. She spurned the thought of being beholden to that low-born myrmidon of her hated cousin. But finally her necessities prevailed. She sent to Borssele to borrow a small sum. He not only lent it to her but told her he had more at her disposal. Jaqueline was mollified: we are all mollified with a little money and the promise of more. She made up her mind he was not a myrmidon after all but an honest fellow. She admitted him to her presence. Borssele was handsome and graceful; and she did not frown upon him. He took a pliant hour, and though he had never read Othello, he told his tale of love as eloquently as the Moor. They were privately married.
When Philip-the-good heard of this fresh escapade of his double cousin, he flew into a towering passion—or at least, pretended to do so. He stamped and stormed. That Jaqueline of Bavaria, duchess of Brabant, daughter of Burgundy and of France, should stoop to the hand of Philip Borssele! So he seized the bridegroom and shut him up in the castle of Rupelmonde; and thus was Jaqueline deprived of her fourth husband.
But there is reason to believe that Philip-the-good was putting on airs, and that he was secretly glad of the advantage which Jaqueline’s imprudence had given him over her. She had never ceded her estates to him by any formal act: he held them as a brigand holds his prey; but now he brought her to surrender to him her whole patrimony as the ransom of her husband. Borssele was set free, and in order to raise him to a rank a little more commensurate with that of his wife, Philip created him count of Ostravant, and conferred upon him the collar of the Golden Fleece, an order of chivalry which Philip himself had established as a rival to the English order of the Garter; and he settled upon the newly married pair a part of the revenues of Ostravant, so that his double cousin and cousin-in-law might not starve.[12]
We know but little of the remaining years of Jaqueline’s life. We hope they were more tranquil than those we have recounted. She died in 1436, at the age of thirty-five, leaving no issue.
The domains which she had inherited formed technically a part of the Empire Holy and Roman; and at her death the emperor Sigismund claimed that they had escheated to him. The claim was in accordance with feudal law, but Philip was already in possession and was too powerful to be dislodged. Thus did the provinces of Jaqueline go to swell the dominion of the House of Burgundy—that house whose fate it was never to decline after the manner of empires, but to grow in power and splendor under each succeeding duke until the day when Charles-the-rash, son of Philip, should stretch forth his hand to a regal diadem; and then the storm came which swept away both duke and dominion.