Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?  Was this the man to be used for their vile ends by a savage English party thirsting for the blood of an innocent victim, and by the vile priest who was its tool?  It does not seem so to our eyes across the long level of the centuries which clear away so many mists.  And no more dreadful accusation can be brought against France than the suggestion that men like these, her best and most carefully trained, were willing to act as blood-hounds for the advantage and the pay of the invader.  But there are many French historians to whom the mere fact of a black gown or at least an ecclesiastical robe, confounds every testimony, and to whom even the name of Frenchman does not make it appear possible that a priest should retain a shred of honour or of honesty.  We should have said by the light of nature and probability that had every guarantee been required for the impartiality and justice of such a tribunal, they could not have been better secured than by the selection of such men to conduct its proceedings.  They made a great and terrible mistake, as the wisest of men have made before now.  They did much worse, they behaved to an unfortunate girl who was in their power with indescribable ferocity and cruelty; but we must hope that this was owing to the period at which they lived rather than to themselves.

It is not perhaps indeed from the wise and learned, the Stoics and Pundits of a University, that we should choose judges for the divine simplicity of those babes and sucklings out of whose mouth praise is perfected.  At the same time to choose the best men is not generally the way adopted to procure a base judgement.  Cauchon might have been subject to this blame had he filled the benches of his court with creatures of his own, nameless priests and dialecticians, knowing nothing but their own poor science of words.  He did not do so.  There were but two Englishmen in the assembly, neither of them men of any importance or influence although there must have been many English priests in the country and in the train of Winchester.  There were not even any special partisans of Burgundy, though some of the assessors were Burgundian by birth.  We should have said, had we known no more than this, that every precaution had been taken to give the Maid the fairest trial.  But at the same time a trial which is conducted under the name of the Inquisition is always suspect.  The mere fact of that terrible name seems to establish a foregone conclusion; few are the prisoners at that bar who have ever escaped.  This fact is almost all that can be set against the high character of the individuals who composed the tribunal.  At all events it is no argument against the English that they permitted the best men in France to be chosen as Jeanne’s judges.  It is the most bewildering and astonishing of historical facts that they were so, and yet came to the conclusion they did, by the means they did, and that without falling under the condemnation, or scorn, or horror of their fellow-men.