Richard II., soon after his accession, married Anne of Bohemia, sister of Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia and Emperor of Germany, with whom he lived happily till the year 1394, when about to start on his Irish expedition; at which period, Froissart tells us, “the Lady Anne, Queen of England, fell sick, to the great distress of the King and her household. Her disorder increased so rapidly, that she departed this life on the feast of Whitsuntide, in the year of grace 1394.”[17] It appears that the King felt her loss very severely, even venting his anguish upon the palace at Sheen, where she died, which he caused to be razed to the ground.
The funeral service was not performed at the time, as the King ordered extraordinary preparations to be made for the occasion, insomuch that, as our author says, “nothing was over seen like to it before, not even at the burial of the good Queen Philippa, nor of any other. The King would have it so, because she was the daughter of the King of Bohemia,[18] Emperor of Rome and of Germany. He was inconsolable for her loss, as they mutually loved each other, having been married young.” He farther states, that “there was no talk of the King’s marrying again, for he would not hear of it,” &c. &c. Nevertheless, not very long afterwards, he married Isabella, daughter of Charles VI., of France.
This Illumination has been selected principally for the accurate manner in which the ordinary fittings of a bed-room of the period are delineated, particularly the carpet of stamped leather, then in general use in the rooms of the sick.[Pg 139][Pg 138]
Evan de Foix, burnt to death at a masked dance at the Hotel de Sᵗ. Pol.
PLATE XXXII.
THE DEATH OF EVAN DE FOIX.
The well-known catastrophe exhibited in this picture occurred in the year 1393,[19] at the Hotel St. Pol, in Paris. There was a grand entertainment on the occasion of the marriage of one of the ladies of the Queen. A certain Hugonin de Guisay proposed to the King and four others, himself making the sixth, to disguise themselves as wild men, in dresses covered all over with flax to imitate hair.[20] They entered the apartment, five chained together, dancing, the King leading them, to the great astonishment and amusement of the company, who could not guess who they were, so complete was the disguise. The Duchess of Berri, who, although the King’s aunt, was yet the youngest lady present, beckoned the King to her, and put many joking questions to him, with the view of ascertaining his name, refusing to let him leave her till he had avowed it. At this moment, the Duke of Orleans, wishing to discover one of the others, placed a torch so near that the flax caught fire, and in a moment all five were enveloped in flames, breaking their chains and uttering fearful cries of agony. The Duchess de Berri, seeing the disaster, threw her dress (“goune,” as Froissart calls it) over the King, who, crouching beneath it, was saved. The son of the Lord of Nantouillet, when his dress took fire, recollected a tub of water close at hand, in the buttery (bouteillerie), where bottles and glasses were washed, and, plunging into it, saved his life, but was much burnt. The other four, Evan de Foix (bastard son of the Count Gaston), Hugonin de Guisay, the Compte de Joigny, and Charles de Poictiers, were burnt to death.[Pg 142] This sad event caused much to be said respecting the excesses of the Court; the King, it was rumoured, being then of an age to give up boyish sports and pastimes, and assume the severity and gravity of a great sovereign.[21]