had not yet
landed in France, the host of the Bear Inn had been the King's
sergeant-at-arms, one Jean Roche, a man of wealth and fair fame. He
was a devoted follower of the Duke of Burgundy, and that was what
ruined him. Paris was then occupied by the Armagnacs. In the year
1416, in order to turn them out of the city, Jean Roche concerted with
divers burgesses. The plot was to be carried out on Easter Day, which
that year fell on the 29th of April. But the Armagnacs discovered it.
They threw the conspirators into prison and brought them to trial. On
the first Saturday in May the Seigneur de l'Ours was carried to the
market place in a tumbrel with Durand de Brie, a dyer, master of the
sixty cross-bowmen of Paris, and Jean Perquin, pin-maker and brasier.
All three were beheaded, and the body of the Seigneur de l'Ours was
hanged at Montfaucon where it remained until the entrance of the
Burgundians. Six weeks after their coming, in July, 1418, his body was
taken down from gibbet and buried in consecrated ground.[1960]

[Footnote 1960: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, pp. 71, 72. A.
Longnon, _Paris pendant la domination anglaise_, p. 118, note 1.]

Now the widow of Jean Roche had a daughter by a first marriage. Her
name was Jeannette; she took for her first husband a certain Bernard
le Breton; for her second, Jaquet Guillaume, who was not rich. He owed
money to Maitre Jean Fleury, a clerk at law and the King's secretary.
His wife's affairs were not more prosperous; her father's goods had
been confiscated and she had been obliged to redeem a part of her
maternal inheritance. In 1424, the couple were short of money, and
they sold a house, concealing the fact that it was mortgaged. Being
charged by the purchaser, they were thrown into prison, where they
aggravated their offence by suborning two witnesses, one a priest, the
other a chambermaid. Fortunately for them, they procured a
pardon.[1961]

[Footnote 1961: A. Longnon, _Paris pendant la domination anglaise_, pp.
119-123.]

The Jaquet Guillaume couple, therefore, were in a sorry plight. There
remained to them, however, the inheritance of Jean Roche, the inn near
the Place Baudet, at the sign of the Bear, the title of which Jaquet
Guillaume bore. This second Seigneur de l'Ours was to be as strongly
Armagnac as the other had been Burgundian, and was to pay the same
price for his opinions.

Six years had passed since his release from prison, when, in the March
of 1430