d Hainault,
possessed neither the moral nor physical qualities suited to
mate with the most lovely, intrepid, and talented woman of her
times; nor the vigor and firmness required for the maintenance
of an increased, and for those days a considerable, dominion.
Jacqueline thoroughly despised her insignificant husband; first
in secret, and subsequently by those open avowals forced from
her by his revolting combination of weakness, cowardice, and
tyranny. He tamely allowed the province of Holland to be invaded
by the same ungrateful bishop of Liege, John the Pitiless, whom
his wife's father and his own uncle had re-established in his
justly forfeited authority. But John of Brabant revenged himself
for his wife's contempt by a series of domestic persecutions so
odious that the states of Brabant interfered for her protection.
Finding it, however, impossible to remain in a perpetual contest
with a husband whom she hated and despised, she fled from Brussels,
where he held his ducal court, and took refuge in England, under
the protection of Henry V., at that time in the plenitude of
his fame and power.

England at this epoch enjoyed the proudest station in European
affairs. John the Fearless, after having caused the murder of
his rival, the duke of Orleans, was himself assassinated on the
bridge of Montereau by the followers of the dauphin of France, and
in his presence. Philip, duke of Burgundy, the son and successor
of John, had formed a close alliance with Henry V., to revenge
his father's murder; and soon after the death of the king he
married his sister, and thus united himself still more nearly to
the celebrated John, duke of Bedford, brother of Henry, and regent
of France, in the name of his infant nephew, Henry VI. But besides
the share on which he reckoned in the spoils of France, Philip
also looked with a covetous eye on the inheritance of Jacqueline,
his cousin. As soon as he had learned that this princess, so
well received in England, was taking measures for having her
marriage annulled, to enable her to espouse the duke of Gloucester,
also the brother of Henry V., and subsequently known by the
appellation of "the good duke Humphrey," he was tormented by a
double anxiety. He, in the first place, dreaded that Jacqueline
might have children by her projected marriage with Gloucester (a
circumstance neither likely nor even possible, in the opinion of
some historians, to result from her union with John of Brabant:
Hu