of France, in the name of his infant nephew, Henry VI. But besides
the share on which he reckoned in the spoils of France, Philip
also looked with a covetous eye on the inheritance of Jacqueline,
his cousin. As soon as he had learned that this princess, so
well received in England, was taking measures for having her
marriage annulled, to enable her to espouse the duke of Gloucester,
also the brother of Henry V., and subsequently known by the
appellation of "the good duke Humphrey," he was tormented by a
double anxiety. He, in the first place, dreaded that Jacqueline
might have children by her projected marriage with Gloucester (a
circumstance neither likely nor even possible, in the opinion of
some historians, to result from her union with John of Brabant:
Hume, vol. iii., p. 133), and thus deprive him of his right of
succession to her states; and in the next, he was jealous of
the possible domination of England in the Netherlands as well
as in France. He therefore soon became self-absolved from all
his vows of revenge in the cause of his murdered father, and
labored solely for the object of his personal aggrandizement.
To break his connection with Bedford; to treat secretly with
the dauphin, his father's assassin, or at least the witness and
warrant for his assassination; and to shuffle from party to party
as occasion required, were movements of no difficulty to Philip,
surnamed "the Good." He openly espoused the cause of his infamous
relative, John of Brabant; sent a powerful army into Hainault,
which Gloucester vainly strove to defend in right of his affianced
wife; and next seized on Holland and Zealand, where he met with
a long but ineffectual resistance on the part of the courageous
woman he so mercilessly oppressed. Jacqueline, deprived of the
assistance of her stanch but ruined friends,[1] and abandoned
by Gloucester (who, on the refusal of Pope Martin V. to sanction