450 THE DECLINE AND FALL tion of the barons of Romania ; his two sons, Robert and Baldwin, successively held and lost the remains of the Latin empire in the East, and the grand-daughter of Baldwin the Second again mingled her blood with the blood of France and of Valois. To support the expenses of a troubled and transitory reign, their patrimonial estates were mortgaged or sold ; and the last em- perors of Constantinople depended on the annual charity of Rome and Naples. Wliile the elder brothers dissipated their wealth in romantic adventures, and the castle of Courtenay was profaned by a ple- beian owner, the younger branches of that adopted name were propagated and multiplied. But their splendour was clouded by poverty and time : after the decease of Robert, great butler of France, they descended from princes to barons ; the next genera- tions were confounded with the simple gentry ; the descendants of Hugh Capet could no longer be visible in the rural lords of Tanlay and of Champignelles. The more adventurous embraced, without dishonour, the profession of a soldier; the least active and opulent might sink, like their cousins of the branch of Dreux, into the condition of peasants. Their royal descent, in a dark period of four hundred years, became each day more obsolete and ambiguous ; and their pedigree, instead of being en- rolled in the annals of the kingdom, must be painfully searched by the minute diligence of heralds and genealogists. It was not till the end of the sixteenth century, on the accession of a family almost as remote as their own, that the princely spirit of the Courtenays again revived ; and the question of the nobility pro- voked them to assert the royalty of their blood. They appealed to the justice and compassion of Henry the Fourth ; obtained a favourable opinion from twenty lawyers of Italy and Germany, and modestly compared themselves to the descendants of king David, whose prerogatives were not impaired by the lapse of ages, or the trade of a carpenter.^^ But every ear was deaf, and every circumstance was adverse, to their lawful claims. The Bourbon kings were justified by the neglect of the Valois ; the princes of the blood, more recent and lofty, disdained the alliance ^ Of the various petitions, apologies, &c. , published by the princes of Courtenay, I have seen the three following all in octavo : i. De Stirpe et Origine Domus de Courtenay : addita sunt Responsa celeberrimorum Europa; Jurisconsultorum, Paris, 1607. 2. Representation du Proc^d^ tenu a I'instance faicte devant le Roi, par Messieurs de Courtenay, pour la conversation de I'Honneur et Dignitt? de leur Maison, Branch de la Royalle Maison de France, a Paris, 1613. 3. Repr(5sentation du subject qui a port^ Messieurs de Salles et de Fraville, de la Maison de Courte- nays, A se retirer hors du Royaume, 1614. It was an homicide, for which the Courtenays expected to be pardoned, or tried, as princes of the blood.
