The cruel tragedy which followed will always leave a deep stain on the character of the regent, who in all other matters showed himself a just and righteous man. Jeanne was kept for many months in prison, subjected to cruel and ribald treatment, and examined again and again by bigoted ecclesiastics who were determined to prove her a witch. She constantly withstood them with a firm piety which moved their wrath, maintaining that her visions and voices were from God, and that all her acts had been done with His aid. After much quibbling, cross-examination, and persecution, a tribunal of French clergy, headed by the Bishop of Beauvais, pronounced her a sorceress and heretic, and handed her over to the secular arm for execution; the English, therefore, burnt her alive in the market-place of Rouen (May, 1431). Her callous master, Charles VII., made no attempt to save her, and seems to have viewed her fate with complete indifference. [Sidenote: =Weakness of the English.=] Though Jeanne had met a martyr's death, her cause continued to prosper. The spell of the invincibility of the English had been broken, and with their inferior numbers they could no longer resist the French assaults, in which nobles, burghers, and peasants now all united with a single heart. It was in vain that Bedford brought over the little ten-year-old Henry VI. from England, and crowned him at Paris (1431). The ceremony was attended by hardly a single Frenchman; even the Burgundian faction in the capital were beginning to doubt and draw apart from their old allies. [Sidenote: =Dissensions in the Regency.=] Meanwhile in England the continued ill-success of the war was leading to the growth of a peace party, at whose head was Henry Beaufort, the Bishop of Winchester, who had lately become a cardinal. That Beaufort supported any scheme was a sufficient reason for Gloucester to oppose it, and Humphrey made himself the mouthpiece of those who pleaded for perpetual war. The cardinal and the duke quarrelled in and out of Parliament, their followers were always brawling, and the action of the council of regency grew weak and divided. [Sidenote: =Peace proposals.--Burgundy joins the French.=]