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By Root 1330 0

castle two tin serving platters used for service of the King’s dinner, hid them under his tunic, and went to a hostel in the town, where he was seen by a sergeant of “our dear and beloved cousin, the Sire de Coucy,” who asked him, “What are you doing here?” Baudet replied, “I am warming myself.” As he was speaking, the sergeant saw the platters and arrested him. He was taken to prison in the castle, where he was also found to have taken a silver-gilt platter embossed with the royal mark. “In the prison he was like to have died, but that our pardon and grace was humbly begged, and since the said Baudet has always been a man of good life and honest speech with no other misdeeds on his record, we are pleased to grant him this grace and mercy,” and to quit, remit, and pardon the supplicant, now and in the future, by “our special grace and royal authority” of all offense, fines, civil and criminal punishment which he may have sustained, and restore him and his good wife to their goods, and to let this be known to all officers of justice of the region and their lieutenants or successors now or in the future.

That all this was required in the King’s name for the theft of three platters—and the word theft is not used in the document—suggests, beyond mere prolixity, the care taken to exhibit the King as protector of the poor.

In May, two months after the King’s visit, Coucy attended a meeting of the Royal Council with Admiral de Vienne, Guy de la Tremolile representing Burgundy, Jean le Mercier, the King’s minister, and others to confer on the renewed invasion of England. According to the Monk of St. Denis, the “shameful” departure of the King and nobles from the Scheldt had caused a painful impression upon all Frenchmen, with the result that it was felt necessary to erase the impression by striking a powerful blow at England, and to “commit there all the excesses of an enemy upon an enemy.” Clearly the plan for conquest had receded to something more in the nature of a raid.

The expedition was to be split into two parts: one, commanded by the Constable, to leave from Brittany, and the other, commanded by the Admiral, Coucy, and Count Waleran de St. Pol, to leave from Harfleur in Normandy. Their objective was Dover. They were to take 6,000 men-at-arms, 2,000 crossbowmen, 6,000 “other men of war,” enough food for three months including hay and oats for the horses, and armor in good condition. Intentions were certainly genuine, for in June a vessel of the Sire de Coucy was loaded at Soissons on the Aisne with foodstuffs, plate, cooking equipment, linens, arms, and tents to be delivered at Rouen. Coucy, Vienne, and the others were at Harfleur at this time. Coastal raids from Calais led by the fiery Sir Harry Percy, called “Hotspur,” failed to halt preparations because Percy attacked northward in the wrong direction. The day for departure was fixed, all provisions loaded, every man given his wages for fifteen days, and “the journey so far forward that it was thought it could not be broken.”

Contriving as best they could to interfere, the English found their cat’s-paw this time in the chronic conspirator Jean de Montfort, Duke of Brittany. To determine where Montfort stood at any given time, as he tried to hold his balance between England and France, would have required the arts of a sorcerer. As parties of opposing policy developed within each country, his problem became more complicated and his deals ever more entangled. It is no wonder that, according to repute, he was a sovereign given easily to tears.

One constant in his sentiments was hatred of his fellow Breton and subject Olivier de Clisson, Constable of France. The feeling, which was mutual, did not preclude Montfort’s making a treaty with Clisson in 1381 by which, “in consideration of the perfect love and affinity we have for our dear and well-beloved cousin and vassal, Messire Olivier, Seigneur de Clisson, Constable of France … we promise to be a good, true, and beneficient lord to the said seigneur … and to guard well his honor and the state of his person.” Olivier promised