The next witness is John Tiphanie, a canon of the Sainte Chapelle of Paris.  He was also a doctor in medicine.  Tiphanie had been compelled much against his inclination to take part in the trial of Joan.  He was one of the doctors who were sent to see her when she lay ill in prison.

Then follows another doctor; this is William Delachambre, aged only forty-eight in 1456.  He must have practised his vocation at a very early age.  Delachambre had also joined in the trial of the Maid, from fear of Cauchon.  His evidence relating to the scene at Saint Ouen is important.

‘I remember well,’ he says, ’the abjuration which Joan of Arc made.  She hesitated a long while before she made it.  At length William Erard determined her to make it by telling her that, when she had made it, she should be delivered from her prison.  Under this promise she at length decided to do so, and she then read a short profession of some six or seven lines written on a piece of folded paper.  I was so near that I could see the writing on the paper.’

We next come to the witness whose evidence is, next to that of Dunois, of the greatest importance; it is that of the Recorder, or judges’ clerk, William Manchon.  Born in 1395, he was sixty-one years of age when the rehabilitation trial took place.  Manchon’s evidence takes up thirty pages in M. Fabre’s work, already often referred to—­Le Proces de Rehabilitation de Jeanne d’Arc.  Much against his will was Manchon obliged to act in the trial of the Maid, but he did not dare disobey the orders of those who formed the Council of Henry VI.  All that he deposed has been made use of in the account of the heroine’s life; so now we need do no more than refer to it.  The other Recorder who helped Manchon to draw up the minutes of the trial was also examined; this was William Colles, called Boisguillaume.  He was in his sixty-sixth year.  Colles relates that, after the execution, the people used to point out the author of Joan’s death with horror—­’besides,’ he adds, ’I have been told that the most prominent of those who took part in her condemnation died miserably.  Nicolas Midi [who had preached the sermon on the day of her execution, and just before it took place] was stricken with leprosy, and Cauchon died suddenly, while being shaved.’

A third Recorder was also examined, Nicolas Taquel.  Then followed the priest Massieu.  During the trial of Joan he had acted as bailiff to the Court, and in that capacity had seen much of the prisoner; he had always conveyed her to and from her prison.  It may be remembered that it was he who, on Joan’s petition to be allowed to kneel before the chapel on her way to the hall of judgment, granted her request, and was threatened by Cauchon, should it again occur, to be thrown into prison where, as Cauchon said to him, he would not have ’the light of sun or moon.’  Massieu remained till the end with Joan, and it is he who records that the executioner