assic learning which was becoming a passion across the
Alps. One wandering scholar from Forli, who took the pompous name of Titus
Livius and who wrote at his request the biography of Henry the Fifth,
Humphrey made his court poet and orator. The Duke probably aided Poggio
Bracciolini in his search for classical manuscripts when he visited
England in 1420. Leonardo Aretino, one of the scholars who gathered about
Cosmo de Medici, dedicated to him a translation of the _Politics_ of
Aristotle, and when another Italian scholar sent him a fragment of a
translation of Plato's _Republic_ the Duke wrote to beg him to send the
rest. But with its love of learning Humphrey combined the restlessness,
the immorality, the selfish, boundless ambition which characterized the
age of the Renascence. His life was sullied by sensual excesses, his greed
of power shook his nephew's throne. So utterly was he already distrusted
that the late king's nomination of him as Regent was set aside by the
royal Council, and he was suffered only to preside at its deliberations
with the nominal title of Protector during Bedford's absence. The real
direction of affairs fell into the hands of his uncle, Henry Beaufort, the
Bishop of Winchester, a legitimated son of John of Gaunt by his mistress
Catharine Swynford.

[Sidenote: Jacqueline of Hainault]

Two years of useless opposition disgusted the Duke with this nominal
Protectorship, and in 1424 he left the realm to push his fortunes in the
Netherlands. Jacqueline, the daughter and heiress of William, Count of
Holland and Hainault, had originally wedded John, Duke of Brabant; but
after a few years of strife she had procured a divorce from one of the
three claimants who now disputed the Papacy, and at the close of Henry the
Fifth's reign she had sought shelter in England. At his brother's death
the Duke of Gloucester avowed his marriage with her and adopted her claims
as his own. To support them in arms however was to alienate Philip of
Burgundy, who was already looking forward to the inheritance of his
childless nephew, the Duke of Brabant; and as the alliance with Burgundy
was the main strength of the English cause in France, neither Bedford, who
had shown his sense of its value by a marriage with the Duke's sister, nor
the English council were likely to support measures which would imperil or
weaken it. Such considerations however had little weight with Humphrey;
and in October 1424 he set sail for Calais