solemnly ratified at Calais the treaty of Britigny.  Two sons of King John, the Duke of Anjou and the Duke of Berry, with several other personages of consideration, princes of the blood, barons, and burgesses of the principal good towns, were given as hostages to the King of England for the due execution of the treaty; and Edward III. negotiated between the King of France and Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, a reconciliation precarious as ever.  The work of pacification having been thus accomplished, King John departed on foot for Boulogne, where he was awaited by the dauphin, his son, and where the Prince of Wales and his two brothers, like-wise on foot, came and joined him.  All these princes passed two days together at Boulogne in religious ceremonies and joyous galas; after which the Prince of Wales returned to Calais, and King John set out for Paris, which he once more entered, December 13, 1360.  “He was welcomed there,” says Froissart, “by all manner of folk, for he had been much desired there.  Rich presents were made him; the prelates and barons of his kingdom came to visit him; they feasted him and rejoiced with him, as it was seemly to do; and the king received them sweetly and handsomely, for well he knew how.”

And that was all King John did know.  When he was once more seated on his throne, the counsels of his eldest son, the late regent, induced him to take some wise and wholesome administrative measures.  All adulteration of the coinage was stopped; the Jews were recalled for twenty years, and some securities were accorded to their industry and interests; and an edict renewed the prohibition of private wars.  But in his personal actions, in his bearing and practices as a king, the levity, frivolity, thoughtlessness, and inconsistency of King John were the same as ever.  He went about his kingdom, especially in Southern France, seeking everywhere occasions for holiday-making and disbursing, rather than for observing and reforming the state of the country.  During the visit he paid in 1362 to the new pope, Urban V., at Avignon, he tried to get married to Queen Joan of Naples, the widow of two husbands already, and, not being successful, he was on the point of involving himself in a new crusade against the Turks.  It was on his return from this trip that he committed the gravest fault of his reign, a fault which was destined to bring upon France and the French kingship even more evils and disasters than those which had made the treaty of Bretigny a necessity.  In 1362, the young Duke of Burgundy, Philip de Louvre, the last of the first house of the Dukes of Burgundy, descendants of King Robert, died without issue, leaving several pretenders to his rich inheritance.  King John was, according to the language of the genealogists, the nearest of blood, and at the same time the most powerful; and he immediately took possession of the duchy, went, on the 23d of December, 1362, to Dijon, swore on the altar of St. Benignus that he would maintain