Next follow, or once followed, a pair of windows (numbers 29 and 30) which were removed by the sculptor Bridan, in 1788, in order to obtain light for his statuary below.  The donor was “Domina Johannes Baptista,” who, we are told, was Jeanne de Dammartin; and the window was given in memory, or in honour, of her marriage to Ferdinand of Castile in 1237.  Jeanne was a very great lady, daughter of the Comte d’Aumale and Marie de Ponthieu.  Her father affianced her in 1235 to the King of England, Henry iii, and even caused the marriage to be celebrated by proxy, but Queen Blanche broke it off, as she had forbidden, in 1231, that of Yolande of Britanny.  She relented so far as to allow Jeanne in 1237 to marry Ferdinand of Castile, who still sits on horseback in the next rose:  “Rex CASTILLAE.”  He won the crown of Castile in 1217 and died in 1252, when Queen Jeanne returned to Abbeville and then, at latest, put up this window at Chartres in memory of her husband.

The windows numbers 31 and 32 are the subject of much dispute, but whether the donors were Jean de Chatillon or the three children of Thibaut le Grand of Champagne, they must equally belong to the later series of 1260-70, rather than to the earlier of 1210-20.  The same thing is or was true of the next pair, numbers 33 and 34, which were removed in 1773, but the record says that at the bottom of number 34 was the figure of Saint Louis’s son, Louis of France, who died in 1260, before his father, who still rides in the rose above.

Thus the north side of the choir shows a series of windows that precisely cover the lifetime of Saint Louis (1215-70).  The south side begins, next the apse, with windows numbers 35 and 36, which belong, according to the Comte d’Armancourt, to the family of Montfort, whose ruined castle crowns the hill of Montfort l’Amaury, on the road to Paris, some forty kilometres northeast of Chartres.  Every one is supposed to know the story of Simon de Montfort who was killed before Toulouse in 1218.  Simon left two sons, Amaury and Simon.  The sculptor Bridan put an end also to the window of Amaury, but in the rose, Amaury, according to the Abbes, still rides on a white horse.  Amaury’s history is well known.  He was made Constable of France by Queen Blanche in 1231; went on crusade in 1239; was captured by the infidels, taken to Babylon, ransomed, and in returning to France, died at Otranto in 1241.  For that age Amaury was but a commonplace person, totally overshadowed by his brother Simon, who went to England, married King John’s daughter Eleanor, and became almost king himself as Earl of Leicester.  At your leisure you can read Matthew Paris’s dramatic account of him and of his death at the battle of Evesham, August 5, 1265.  He was perhaps the last of the very great men of the thirteenth century, excepting Saint Louis himself, who lived a few years longer.  M. d’Armancourt insists that it is the great Earl of Leicester who rides with his visor up, in full armour, on a brown horse, in the rose above the windows numbers 37 and 38.  In any case, the windows would be later than 1240.