heretic. The secular arm had no control over this decree. De l'Averdy gives this as an excuse for the inactivity of the king, who made little exertion in her behalf. But that light and indolent prince never shewed himself zealous and constant in anything.

After four months' imprisonment, the innocent enthusiast, who had resolutely defended herself, and at the examination had named St. Michael as the angel whose voice she had heard in her father's garden, in her fifteenth year, and as her constant guardian and attendant, was sentenced by the inquisition at Rouen to be burnt for sorcery and intercourse with infernal spirits. She was carried, May 24, 1431, to the stake, when her courage appeared to be daunted. She submitted to the church, and declared her revelations to be the work of Satan. Her punishment was then commuted to perpetual imprisonment. But pretexts were soon found to treat her as a relapsed criminal, and as such she was burnt by a slow fire at Rouen, May 30, and her ashes were thrown into the Seine. She died with undaunted fortitude. When they were putting the inquisition cap on her head, before going to the pile, she said to her attendant: "Master, by the grace of God I shall be this night in paradise." There is a tradition that, when she expired, a white dove was seen to rise from the pile.

Among the divines who condemned her, there was only one Englishman, the bishop of Winchester. In 1450 and 1451, measures were taken for revising the process. In 1455, the relations of Joan applied for

a revision. Pope Calixtus III. committed the affair to the archbishop of Rheims, the bishops of Paris and Coutance, and an inquisitor. This court pronounced, in 1456, their decision, that the twelve articles alleged against her were false, and declared her entirely innocent. Her memory was preserved by monuments. In the market-place at Rouen there is a statue of her, on which, under her coat of arms, is the inscription,

"Regia virgineo defenditur ense corona;

Lilia virgineo tuta sub ense nitent."

"The maiden's sword protects the royal crown;

Beneath the maiden's sword the lilies bloom."

According to the portrait of the maid, which Alexander Lenoir discovered at the town-house at Orleans, where there is also a statue of her, and which he sent to the Paris museum of French monuments, Aux petits Augustins, she must have been exceedingly beautiful. Her features have a soft and enthusiastic expression. They have what the French call l'interet du calme. She has a cap with feathers on her head, and is holding in her hands a shield and the consecrated sword.

A monument, with her bust in marble, was erected to her in Domremy, in September 1820.

Her name is supposed to have been Darc, not D'Arc, although historically and familiarly called Joan of Arc.

91

INTERVIEW BETWEEN QUEEN MARY
AND THE PRINCESS ANNE.

AFTER premising that she had something to say which she thought would not be very pleasing to the princess, the queen reminded her sister that nobody was ever "suffered to live at court in my Lord Marlborough's circumstances." It was, therefore, incumbent on her majesty, as she thought, though much against her will, to tell her sister how very unfit it was that Lady Marlborough should stay with the princess either; "since that," added the queen, "gives the husband so just a pretence of being where he ought not."

"Taking everything into consideration," the queen, therefore, plainly intimated to her sister, that since she had allowed Lady Marlborough to accompany her to Kensington on the foregoing night, her majesty was reduced to the necessity of plainly telling her, that her lady of the bedchamber "must not stay," and "that she had all the reason imaginable" to look upon Anne's bringing her as "the strangest thing that ever was done; nor," added the queen, "could all my kindness for you (which is ever ready to turn all you do the best way at any other time) have hindered me from shewing you that at the moment; but I considered your condition, and that made me master myself so far as not to take notice of it then."

"But now," adds the queen, "I must tell you, it

was very unkind in a sister, would have been very uncivil in an equal, and I need not say I have more to claim, which, though my kindness would make me never extort, yet when I see the use you would make of it, I must tell you I know what is due to me, and expect to have it from you. "Tis upon that account, I tell you plainly, Lady Marlborough must not continue with you in the circumstances her lord is."

This assumption of the queen towards her offending sister, Mary softened by kinder terms. "I have all the real kindness imaginable for you," she added; "and as I ever have, so will always do my part to live with you as sisters ought;" and neither the king nor she were willing, as she said, to have recourse to harsher

means.

But notwithstanding the resolution expressed in the foregoing paragraph, "the sight of Lady Marlborough," the princess proceeds to say, "having changed her style, does naturally change her thoughts." "She could pass over most things," and "live with her sister as became her;" but she complained of the want of common civility exhibited by that sister, in not comprehending her wishes, and avoiding the contact with which she had placed her with Lady Marlborough.

This reproof was felt severely by Anne, and gave dire offence to her who had courted the rebuke; and it afforded Mary the desired opportunity of putting a direct affront upon her. Nor could numbers of affectionate expressions, nor what the Duchess of Marl

borough calls, in the conclusion of the epistle, "useless repetitions," intended "to remind her sister of the distance between them," heal the wounds thus made, nor reconcile Anne to a sister who had incurred the displeasure of one whom she loved better than all the world besides.

From this time the firebrand of discord thrown between the two royal sisters was never extinguished except by death. The mortification inflicted upon Lady Marlborough was bitterly commented upon by her, years after she had outlived the effects of other changes in those whom she served, and those whom she endeavoured to serve. This first humiliation was, perhaps, her bitterest pang of the sort; and she, to "whose temper the being turned out was not very agreeable," must have writhed under the banishment from that court in whose atmosphere she had been accustomed from her early youth to consider herself as a privileged individual. Thomson's Memoirs of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough.