from
that of Troye. The council received the herald with great coldness: they
even assigned him his lodgings in a shoemaker's house, by way of insult;
and the populace were so incensed, that if the duke of Glocester had not
given him guards, his life had been exposed to danger when he appeared
in the streets. The Flemings, and other subjects of Philip, were
insulted, and some of them murdered by the Londoners; and every thing
seemed to tend towards a rupture between the two nations.[*] These
violences were not disagreeable to the duke of Burgundy; as they
afforded him a pretence for the further measures which he intended
to take against the English, whom he now regarded as implacable and
dangerous enemies.

A few days after the duke of Bedford received intelligence of this
treaty, so fatal to the interests of England, he died at Rouen; a prince
of great abilities, and of many virtues; and whose memory, except from
the barbarous execution of the maid of Orleans, was unsullied by any
considerable blemish. Isabella, queen of France, died a little before
him, despised by the English, detested by the French, and reduced, in
her latter years, to regard with an unnatural horror the progress and
success of her own son, in recovering possession of his kingdom. This
period was also signalized by the death of the earl of Arundel,[**] a
great English general, who, though he commanded three thousand men,
was foiled by Xaintrailles at the head of six hundred, and soon after
expired of the wounds which he received in the action.

* Monstrelet, vol. ii. p. 120. Holing. p. 612.

** Monstrelet, vol. ii. p. 105. Holing, p. 610.

{1436} The violent factions which prevailed between the duke of
Glocester and the cardinal of Winchester, prevented the English from
taking the proper measures for repairing these multiplied losses, and
threw all their affairs into confusion. The popularity of the duke,
and his near relation to the crown, gave him advantages in the contest,
which he often lost by his open and unguarded temper, unfit to struggle
with the politic and interested spirit of his rival. The balance,
meanwhile, of these parties, kept every thing in suspense; foreign
affairs were much neglected; and though the duke of York, son to that
earl of Cambridge who was executed in the beginning of the last reign,
was appointed successor to the duke of Bedford, it was seven months
before his commission passed the seals; and the Engli