The White Lady of Hazelwood

"The White Lady of Hazelwood" (continued 5)

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It is therefore placed beyond question that the Countess of Montfort died a prisoner in England, at a date when her son had been for ten years an independent sovereign, and though on friendly terms with Edward the Third, was no longer a suppliant for his favour. Can it have occurred without his knowledge and sanction? He was in England when she died, but there is no indication that he ever went to see her, and her funeral, as is shown by the silence of the Wardrobe Rolls, was without any ceremony. Considering the character of the Duke—“violent in all his feelings, loving to madness, hating to fury, and rarely overcoming a prejudice once entertained”—the suspicion is aroused that all the early sacrifices made by his mother, all the gallant defence of his dominions, the utter self-abnegation and the tender love, were suffered to pass by him as the idle wind, in order that he might revenge himself upon her for the one occasion on which she prevented him from breaking his pledged word to King Edward’s daughter, and committing a mésalliance with Alix de Ponteallen. For this, or at any rate for some thwarting of his will, he seems never to have forgiven her.

Marguerite left two children—Duke Jean the Fourth, born 1340, died November 1, 1399: he married thrice,—Mary of England, Joan de Holand, and Juana of Navarre—but left no issue by any but the last, and by her a family of nine children, the eldest being only twelve years old when he died. Strange to say, he named one of his daughters after his discarded mother. His sister Jeanne, who was probably his senior, was originally affianced to Jean of Blois, the long-imprisoned son of Charles and Jeanne: she married, however, Ralph, last Lord Basset of Drayton, and died childless, November 8, 1403.