Considering all that had passed, it seems scarcely possible that Henry IV. should have been so stupid as to think that he could bring about his dearest wish and unite in marriage Henry prince of Wales with the young queen dowager. His accession to the throne had been attended with so little difficulty that he had ceased to reckon with opposition—he remembered that prince Harry and Isabel had played together while he was in exile, and forgot that he had usurped her husband's crown and countenanced his murder. The horror with which Isabel rejected his first proposals did not open his eyes to his folly, and during the two years and a half that she remained in England he spared no effort to bend her to his will. But Isabel was as determined as he, and in her refusal was supported by the French council of regency—for at this time her father was insane.
After much consideration and many messages passing between London and Paris it was finally settled that Isabel should be restored to France and allowed to live with her family. But in all these transactions the meanness of Henry's nature came out. When we remember that Richard had appropriated the revenues of the lands of Lancaster to defray the expenses of the Irish expedition we may perhaps find some excuse for his division of Isabel's jewels amongst his children (though a large number of them had been given her in France); but he pretended that he had ordered their return, which was plainly untrue, and declined to give her and her attendants proper clothes for their journey. The French court was far more indignant with his conduct than Isabel, who, still stricken with grief and wearied with imprisonment, was longing to be back in her own country. At the end of May Isabel set out from Havering with a great train of ladies, the noblest in the land. They rode slowly, for the roads were bad, and in the towns people crowded to see them and to wonder at the beauty and sad face of the 'little queen,' whose six years of sovereignty had held more of sorrow than the lifetime of many of those who watched her. Through the green fields and past the country houses at Tottenham and Hackney she went, till at length she reached the Tower, and her cheeks grew white as she glanced at the great hall which was the scene of Richard's abdication. Happy memories there were, too, of her early married life, and of her progress through the City; but these did not bear thinking about, and she hastily turned and spoke some kindly words to the old countess of Hereford, who was behind her.
During the six weeks that Isabel remained in the Tower Henry renewed his son's suit, and urged truly that nowhere would Isabel find a more gallant husband. The prince of Wales, boy though he was, had always admired and loved Isabel; 'there was no princess like her,' he thought, 'and now that she was free why should she not be queen of England again?' And so she might have been had not the shadow of Richard lain between them; once more she refused, though she liked the youth well, and would have been content to know that years after she was dead he would marry her sister Katherine. It was only on French soil that Isabel parted with tears from her English ladies, to whom she gave as remembrances the few jewels she had left. Then she was delivered by Sir Thomas Percy to the count de St. Pol, who was waiting with a company of high-born damsels sent to attend on her, and by him she was conducted to the dukes of Burgundy and Bourbon, with an armed force at their back.
So the merry little girl of seven years old came home again, sad, widowed, and penniless, for Henry had refused to restore her dowry or to make her the customary allowance. This behaviour so enraged her uncle, Louis duke of Orleans, that he is said to have challenged Henry to fight a duel, but Henry had replied that no king ever fought with a subject, even one of royal blood. Isabel herself cared little about the matter. She found, on arriving in Paris, that things were changed very much for the worse. Her father's fits of madness were more frequent and more severe, her mother was more bent on pleasure, and her children were more neglected than before. Isabel did what she could, we may be sure; but the queen of France, though she omitted to perform her own duty, would not suffer it to be done by other people; and Isabel, finding she could be of little use, passed most of her time with her uncle, the duke of Orleans, and his wife, Violante Visconti.
Now the duke of Orleans had a son, Charles, three years younger than the 'queen of England,' and it was his cherished plan to marry him to his niece. The two cousins had much in common; they both loved music, and old romances, and songs, and Charles had already begun to write some of those poems that sound sweet in our ears to-day. Of course the boy was too young for a marriage to be spoken of at present, but after a while it became understood that the ceremony of betrothal would shortly take place. Isabel had not given her consent (in those times that counted for little) without a long struggle. The memory of Richard was still green in her heart, but she was alone in the world. Nobody wanted her except her uncle and aunt, and her friend Charles. Oh yes! and one other, but she would not think of him. Charles was her friend, and in a way she loved him; so, to his great joy, she promised to be his wife, and when she burst into tears during the magnificent ceremony of betrothal he imagined that she was tired with all the feasting, and he led her away to rest and read her the little song he had written all about themselves.
A year after the betrothal the duke of Orleans was stabbed by the duke of Burgundy in the streets of Paris. No notice was taken of the murder, so Isabel and her mother-in-law dressed themselves in deep mourning and, mounting in front of the carriage, which was drawn by white horses with black housings, they drove weeping to the Hôtel de St. Pol, where the king was, followed by a long train of servants and attendants. But Charles was in no state to settle these questions, for any excitement only brought on a paroxysm. The duke's murder remained unavenged, and a year afterwards his widow died, deeply mourned by her son and by Isabel, to whom in the last years she had been a true mother.
It was only in 1408 that Isabel was really married to her cousin, and the one year that was left to her to live was a very happy one. If she had not forgotten Richard, Charles had grown to be part of herself, and once more she was heard to laugh and jest as of old. But in September 1409 a little daughter was born, and in a few hours after the mother lay dead with her baby beside her. At first it was thought her husband would die too, so frantic was his grief, as the poems in which he poured out his heart bear witness. But after a while he roused himself to care for the child, and later to fight for his country, and was taken prisoner at Agincourt by Isabel's old suitor, Henry V. Orleans was brought to England, and in the Tower, where he was imprisoned for twenty-three years, he had ample time to think about his lost wife—of her life in that very Tower, of her body resting quietly in the abbey of St. Lammer at Blois. It lay in the abbey for over two hundred years, and was found, in the reign of Louis XIII., perfect as in life, the linen clothes having been wrapped in quicksilver. By this time the Valois had passed away from the throne of France, and their cousins the Bourbons reigned in their stead, and by them Isabel's body was reverently brought from Blois and laid in the sepulchre of the dukes of Orleans.