The news was true, and was given with circumstantial detail.  Hugh de Lusignan, Count of La Marche, and the most considerable amongst the vassals of the Count of Poitiers, was, if not the prime mover, at any rate the principal performer in the plot.  His wife, Joan (Isabel) of Angouleme, widow of the late King of England, John Lackland, and mother of the reigning king, Henry iii., was indignant at the notion of becoming a vassal of a prince himself a vassal of the King of France, and so seeing herself—­herself but lately a queen, and now a king’s widow and a king’s mother—­degraded, in France, to a rank below that of the Countess of Poitiers.  When her husband, the Count of La Marche, went and rejoined her at Angouleme, he found her giving way alternately to anger and tears, tears and anger.  “Saw you not,” said she, “at Poitiers, where I waited three days to please your king and his queen, how that when I appeared before them, in their chamber, the king was seated on one side of the bed, and the queen, with the Countess of Chartres, and her sister, the abbess, on the other side:  They did not call me nor bid me sit with them, and that purposely, in order to make me vile in the eyes of so many folk.  And neither at my coming in nor at my going out did they rise just a little from their scats, rendering me vile, as you did see yourself.  I cannot speak of it, for grief and shame.  And it will be my death, far more even than the less of our land which they have unworthily wrested from us; unless, by God’s grace, they do repent them, and I see them in their turn reduced to desolation, and losing somewhat of their own lands.  As for me, either I will lose all I have for that end or I will perish in the attempt.”  Queen Blanche’s correspondent added, “The Count of La Marche, whose kindness you know, seeing the countess in tears, said to her, ’Madam, give your commands:  I will do all I can; be assured of that.’  ‘Else,’ said she, ’you shall not come near my person, and I will never see you more.’  Then the count declared, with many curses, that he would do what his wife desired.”

And he was as good as his word.  That same year, 1241, at the end of the autumn, “the new Count of Poitiers, who was holding his court for the first time, did not fail to bid to his feasts all the nobility of his appanage, and, amongst the very first, the Count and Countess of La Marche.  They repaired to Poitiers; but, four days before Christmas, when the court of Count Alphonso had received all its guests, the Count of La Marche, mounted on his war-horse, with his wife on the crupper behind him, and escorted by his men-at-arms also mounted, cross-bow in hand and in readiness for battle, was seen advancing to the prince’s presence.  Every one was on the tiptoe of expectation as to what would come next.  Then the Count of La Marche addressed himself in a loud voice to the Count of Poitiers, saying, ’I might have thought, in a moment of forgetfulness and