To serve France for a grand constable.
We make and execute all laws,
Can judge the judges, and the Cause; 290
Prescribe all rules of right or wrong,
To th' long robe, and the longer tongue,
'Gainst which the world has no defence,
But our more pow'rful eloquence.
We manage things of greatest weight 295
In all the world's affairs of state;
Are ministers of war and peace,
That sway all nations how we please.
We rule all churches and their flocks,
Heretical and orthodox, 300
And are the heav'nly vehicles
O' th' spirits in all conventicles:[1]
By us is all commerce and trade
Improv'd, and manag'd, and decay'd:
For nothing can go off so well, 305
Nor bears that price, as what we sell.
We rule in ev'ry public meeting,
And make men do what we judge fitting;[2]
- ↑ As good vehicles at least as the cloak-bag, which was said to have conveyed the same from Rome to the Council of Trent.
- ↑ Much of what is here said on the political influence of women, was aimed at the court of Charles II., who was greatly governed by his
last extremity. She went to the coronation of Charles the Seventh, when he was almost ruined, and recognised that prince in the midst of his nobles, though meanly habited. The doctors of divinity and members of Parliament openly declared that there was something supernatural in her conduct. She sent for a sword, which lay in the tomb of a knight, behind the great altar of the church of St Katharine de Forbois, upon the blade of which the cross and fleur-de-lis's were engraven, which put the king in a very great surprise, as none beside himself was supposed to know of it. Upon this he sent her with the command of some troops, with which she relieved Orleans, and drove the English from it, defeated Talbot at the battle of Pattai, and recovered Champagne. At last she was unfortunately taken prisoner in a sally at Champagne in 1430, and tried for a witch or sorceress, condemned, and burnt in Rouen market-place in May, 1430. But her story is differently told by different historians; some denying the truth of the greater part of it, and some even of her existence. Anstis, in his Register of the Order of the Garter, says that for her valiant actions she was ennobled and had a grant of arms, dated January 16th, 1429. Her story is beautifully dramatised by Schiller in his "Maid of Orleans."
