Ch. 9 - The Legendary Windows - Page 2

been a companion of Richard on his
crusade in 1192, where, according to the Chronicle, "he shewed
himself but a timid man"; which seems scarcely likely in a companion
of Richard; but it is not of him that the Chartres window speaks,
except as the son of Mahaut or Matilda of Champagne who was a sister
of Alix of Champagne, Queen of France. The Table shows, therefore,
that Geoffroi's son and successor as the Comte du Perche--Thomas--
was second cousin of Louis the Lion, known as King Louis VIII of
France. They were probably of much the same age.

If this were all, one might carry it in one's head for a while, but
the relationship which dominates the history of this period was that
of all these great ruling families with Richard Coeur-de-Lion and
his brother John, nicknamed Lackland, both of whom in succession
were the most powerful Frenchmen in France. The Table shows that
their mother Eleanor of Guienne, the first Queen of Louis VII, bore
him two daughters, one of whom, Alix, married, about 1164, the Count
Thibaut of Chartres and Blois, while the other, Mary, married the
great Count of Champagne. Both of them being half-sisters of Coeur-
de-Lion and John, their children were nephews or half-nephews,
indiscriminately, of all the reigning monarchs, and Coeur-de-Lion
immortalized one of them by a line in his prison-song, as he
immortalized Le Perche:--

Je nel di pas de celi de Chartain,
La mere Loeis.

"Loeis," therefore, or Count Louis of Chatres, was not only nephew
of Coeur-de-Lion and John Lackland, but was also, like Count Thomas
of Le Perche, a second cousin of Louis VIII. Feudally and personally
he was directly attached to Coeur-de-Lion rather than to Philip
Augustus.

If society in the twelfth century could follow the effects of these
relationships, personal and feudal, it was cleverer than society in
the twentieth; but so much is simple: Louis of France, Thibaut of
Chartres, and Thomas of Le Perche, were cousins and close friends in
the year 1215, and all were devoted to the Virgin of Chartres.
Judging from the character of Louis's future queen, Blanche of
Castile, their wives were, if possible, more devoted still; and in
that year Blanche gave birth to Saint Louis, who seems to have been
the most devoted of all.

Meanwhile their favourite uncle, Coeur-de-Lion, had died in the year
1199. Thibaut's great-grandmother, Eleanor of Guienne, died in 1202.
King John, left to himself, rapidly accumulated enemies innumerable,
abroad and at home. In 1203, Philip Augustus confiscated all the
fiefs he held from the French Crown, and in 1204 seized Normandy.
John sank rapidly from worse to worst, until at last the English
barons rose and forced him to