P. 17: Brantôme refers to Françoise de Foix, Chateaubriant's lady, regarding whom an old pamphlet of 1606 says as follows: "She could do what she desired, and she desired many things that she ought not to at all. During her lifetime, her husband was ever afflicted and tormented." (Factum pour M. le connestable contre Madame de Guise, 1606.) That is also the opinion of Gaillard in his Histoire de Françoise Ier, t. VII, p. 179, in the 1769 edition, who sees in this passage an allusion to Mme. de Chateaubriant.
P. 17: Jean de Bourdigné, author of Histoire agrégative des Annales et Chroniques d'Anjou et du Maine (Angers, 1529, fol.), was born at Angers. He was a priest and Canon of the Cathedral of his native town. The book is very rare; as a history it is almost worthless, being full of the wildest fables.
P. 17: Francis I. king of France, 1515-1547.
P. 21: Philip II. had his wife Isabelle de Valois poisoned; he suspected her of adultery with Don Carlos, his son of a former marriage.
P. 22: Louis X., surnamed le Hutin, had caused his wife Marguerite de Bourgogne to be strangled at the Château-Gaillard. She had been imprisoned there in 1314. As to Gaston II., of Foix, outraged by the life of debauch Jeanne d'Artois (his mother) led, he obtained from Philippe de Valois an order of internment in 1331.
P. 22: Anne Boleyn, who was the cause of the Anglican schism. The king had had her beheaded because of her infidelity and married Jane Seymour. As to the charge of which Brantôme speaks, Henry VIII. was so keen on that matter that he had caused Catherine Howard to be beheaded because he had not been quite convinced of her virginity.
P. 23: Baldwyn II., cousin and successor of the first Baldwyn, king of Jerusalem, brother of Godfrey de Bouillon, reigned from 1119 to 1131. Brantôme is mistaken here. Baldwyn II. had married Morphie, daughter of Prince de Mélitine; but he had not been formerly married. Does he wish to speak of Baudoin Ire, who repudiated the daughter of the Prince d'Arménie and then Adéle de Monferrat? (Cf. Guillaume de Tyr, liv. II, c. xv.)
P. 23: Read Melitene; this is how the Ancients named this town,
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