[Footnote 1]: Generally and rationally supposed to have been derived from the country which poured forth the first numerous bands of these adventurers; i.e. Brabant. See Ducange, La Chenaye du Bois, &c. Philip Augustus in the end destroyed them for a time.
[Footnote 2]: The great companies of the fourteenth century had their type in the Brabançois, and various other bodies of freebooters, which appeared previous to that period. The chief characteristic of all of these bands was, the having degenerated from soldiers to plunderers, while they maintained a certain degree of discipline and subordination, but cast off every other tie.
[Footnote 3]: M. Charles Nodier.
[Footnote 4]: To ride a mare was reckoned in those days unworthy of anyone but a juggler, a charlatan, or a serf.
[Footnote 5]: Although this act of rashness certainly breathes the spirit of romance, yet such things have been done, and even in our own day.
[Footnote 6]: This is no fantastic remedy, but one of the most effectual the author of this work has ever seen employed. The skin of a sheep, however, is not a whit less potent in its effects than the skin of an izzard.
[Footnote 7]: Philip Augustus, after the death of his first wife, being still a very young man, married Ingerburge, sister of Canute, King of Denmark; but on her arrival in France, he was seized with so strong a personal dislike to her, that he instantly convoked a synod of the clergy of France, who, on pretence of kindred in the prohibited degrees, annulled the marriage. Philip afterwards married the beautiful Agnes, or Mary, as she is called by some, daughter of the Duke of Istria and Meranie, a district it would now be difficult to define, but which comprehended the Tyrol and its dependencies, down to the Adriatic.--See Rigord Gud. Brit. Lit. Innoc. III. Cart Philip II. &c.
[Footnote 8]: One of the four methods of electing a Pope is called by adoration, which takes place when the first Cardinal who speaks instantly (as is supposed by the movement of the Holy Ghost) does reverence to the person he names, proclaiming him Pope, to which must be added the instant suffrage of two-thirds of the assembled conclave.
[Footnote 9]: For a fuller account of this singular person, and the effect his counsels had upon the conduct of Philip Augustus, see Rigord.
[Footnote 10]: Later instances exist of wax having been used in the accounts of the royal treasury of France.