450 THE TRIAL OF JEANNE DAEC. to Rouen, a chief seat of the English power, where to this day the bones of the regent lie magnificently entombed in the cathedral. There he caused a trial to be arranged, of a character so imposing as to command the attention of Europe. No homage rendered her by her adherents conveys to us such a sense of her importance as this trial contrived by an able ruler to neutralize her influence. A politician who had the bestowal of church prefer- ments could as easily find ecclesiastics to execute his will as a politician, who has only trivial, precarious offices to give, can pack a convention and control a caucus. Bed- ford's written promise of the archbishopric of Rouen made Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, his superserviceable agent, through whom all that was most imposing and authoritative in the Church convened at Rouen to try the Maid. Bishops, abbe's, priors, six representatives of the University of Paris, the chief officer of the Inquisition, learned doctors, noted priests — in a word, sixty of the elite of the Church in English France, all of them French- men — assisted at the trial. The castle at Rouen, a vast and impregnable edifice in the style of the period, was the scene of these transac- tions. The great tower is still in good preservation ; the rest of the structure has disappeared. This gloomy- looking extensive edifice, Jeanne Dare's prison and court- house, was the centre of interest to two kingdoms during her half year's detention. It swarmed with in- habitants. As if to nullify the Maid's effective stroke of the Rheims coronation, the uncles of the English king, who was not yet ten years of age, had brought him once more to France, and he remained an inmate of the castle of Rouen during the trial. A Norman chronicler, who saw his entry into Rouen in July, 1430, speaks of him as a very beautiful boy (ung tres beau filz), and adds that the streets through which he
