long become enemies. Sullen murmurs against Jacques Cour were raised in the king's own circle; and the way in which he had begun to make his fortune, the coinage of questionable money, furnished some specious ground for them. There is too general an inclination amongst potentates of the earth to give an easy ear to reasons, good or bad, for dispensing with the gratitude and respect otherwise due to those who serve them. Charles VII., after having long been the patron and debtor of Jacques Coeur, all at once, in 1451, shared the suspicions aroused against him. To accusations of grave abuses and malversations in money matters was added one of even more importance. Agnes Sorel had died eighteen months previously [February 9th, 1450]; and on her death-bed she had appointed Jacques Coeur one of the three executors of her will. In July, 1451, Jacques was at Taillebourg, in Guyenne, whence he wrote to his wife that "he was in as good case and was as well with the king as ever he had been, whatever any body might say." Indeed on the 22nd of July Charles VII. granted him a sum of 772 livres of Tours to help him to keep up his condition and to be more honourably equipped for his service;" and, nevertheless, on the 31st of July, on the information of two persons of the court, who accused Jacques Coeur of having poisoned Agnes Sorel, Charles ordered his arrest and the seizure of his goods, on which he immediately levied a hundred thousand crowns for the purposes of the war. Commissioners extraordinary, taken from amongst the king's grand council, were charged to try him; and Charles VII. declared, it is said, that "if the said moneyman were not found liable to the charge of having poisoned or caused to be poisoned Agnes Sorel, he threw up and forgave all the other cases against him." The accusation of poisoning was soon acknowledged to be false, and the two informers were condemned as calumniators; but the trial was nevertheless proceeded with. Jacques Coeur was accused "of having sold arms to the infidels, of having coined light crowns, of having pressed on board of his vessels, at Montpellier, several individuals, of whom one had thrown himself into the sea from desperation, and lastly of having appropriated to himself presents made to the king in several towns of Languedoc, and of having practised in that country frequent exaction, to the prejudice of the

king as well as of his subjects." After twenty-two months of imprisonment, Jacques Coeur, on the 29th of May, 1453, was convicted, in the king's name, on divers charges, of which several entailed a capital penalty; but "whereas Pope Nicholas V. had issued a rescript and made request in favour of Jacques Coeur, and regard also being had to services received from him," Charles VII. spared his life, "on condition that he should pay to the king a hundred thousand crowns by way of restitution, three hundred thousand by way of fine, and should be kept in prison until the whole claim was satisfied;" and the decree ended as follows: "We have declared and do declare all the goods of the said Jacques Coeur confiscated to us, and we have banished and do banish this Jacques Coeur for ever from this realm, reserving thereanent our own good pleasure."

After having spent nearly three years more in prison, transported from dungeon to dungeon, Jacques Coeur, thanks to the faithful and zealous affection of a few friends, managed to escape from Beaucaire, to embark at Nice and to reach Rome, where Pope Nicholas V. welcomed him with tokens of lively interest. Nicholas died shortly afterwards, just when he was preparing an expedition against the Turks. His successor, Calixtus III., carried out his design and equipped a fleet of sixteen galleys. This fleet required a commander of energy, resolution, and celebrity. Jacques Cœur had lived and fought with Dunois, Xaintrailles, La Hire, and the most valiant French captains; he was known and popular in Italy and the Levant; and the pope appointed him captain-general of the expedition. Charles VII.'s moneyman, ruined, convicted, and banished from France, sailed away at the head of the pope's squadron and of some Catalan pirates to carry help against the Turks to Rhodes, Chios, Lesbos, Lemnos, and the whole Grecian archipelago. On arriving at Chios in November, 1456, he fell ill there, and perceiving his end approaching he wrote to his king "to commend to him his children and to beg that, considering the great wealth and honours he had in his time enjoyed in the king's service, it might be the king's good pleasure to give something to his children in order that they, even those of them who were secular, might be able to live honestly, without coming to want." He died at Chios

on the 25th of November, 1456, and, according to the historian John d'Auton, who had probably lived in the society of Jacques Cœur's children, "he remained interred in the church of the Cordeliers in that island, at the centre of the choir."

We have felt bound to represent with some detail the active and energetic life, prosperous for a long while and afterwards so grievous and hazardous up to its very last day, of this great French merchant at the close of the middle ages, who was the first to extend afar in Europe, Africa, and Asia the commercial relations. of France, and, after the example of the great Italian merchants, to make an attempt to combine politics with commerce, and to promote at one and the same time the material interests of his country and the influence of his government. There can be no doubt but that Jacques Coeur was unscrupulous and frequently visionary as a man of business; but, at the same time, he was inventive, able, and bold, and, whilst pushing his own fortunes to the utmost, he contributed a great deal to develope, in the ways of peace, the commercial, industrial, diplomatic, and artistic enterprise of France. In his relations towards his king, Jacques Cœur was to Charles VII. a servant often over-adventurous, slippery, and compromising, but often also useful, full of resource, efficient, and devoted in the hour of difficulty. Charles VII. was to Jacques Coeur a selfish and ungrateful patron who contemptuously deserted the man whose brains he had sucked, and ruined him. pitilessly after having himself contributed to enrich him unscrupulously.

We have now reached the end of events under this long reign; all that remains is to run over the substantial results of Charles VII.'s government and the melancholy imbroglios of his latter years with his son, the turbulent, tricky, and wickedly able born-conspirator who was to succeed him under the name of Louis XI.

One fact is at the outset to be remarked upon; it at the first blush appears singular but it admits of easy explanation. In the first nineteen years of his reign, from 1423 to 1442, Charles VII. very frequently convoked the states-general, at one time of northern France or Langue d'oil, at another of southern France or Langue