The name of René, ‘king of Sicily and Jerusalem,’ and ruler under various titles in Provence, Anjou, and Lorraine, was at one time a name to conjure with in matters connected with art and literature, above all in the south of France. Of late years there has been a tendency to strip this much harassed king of many of his claims to distinction as a patron of the arts. There seems, however, every reason to connect his name with the introduction of the finer sorts of glass into France, not, of course, of the industry as a whole, though even this was at one time claimed for René. There is evidence to show that as early as 1443 a member of the Ferro family[170] of L’Altare was working for him at Goult, in Provence. This would be the earliest instance known to us of Italian glass-workers in France. King René, we are told, presented to his nephew Louis XI. some pieces of glass ‘_molt variolés et bien peincts_.’ But we can hardly refer to so early a date the beaker of enameled glass formerly preserved at Aix, painted inside with the kneeling figure of the Magdalen by the side of her Master, so arranged that the former was only visible when the cup had been drained; so that, as the inscription quaintly expressed it:— ‘_Qui bien boira Dieu verra Qui boira tout d’une haleine Verra Dieu et la Madelaine._’ It was but a few years later, in 1448, that the famous charter of which a nearly contemporary copy has fortunately been preserved, was granted to certain glass-workers in Lorraine by Jean de Calabre, governor of that duchy in place of his father, King René. In this document we have early evidence of the claim of the glass-workers to the rights of gentlemen.[171] Full recognition is given to the ‘_plusieurs beaux droitz, libertez, franchises et prérogatives, et dont eulx et leurs prédécesseurs ayant joui et usé de tous temps passez et esté tenus et réputez en telle franchise comme chevaliers estimez et gens nobles dudit duchié de Lorrainne_.’ Then follows a list of all these privileges, not the least important being the exemption from ‘_toutes tailles, aydes, subsides, d’ost, de giste et de chevaulchiées quelconques_.’ This is by no means the earliest French document in which the claim to some kind of nobility is made for the profession. As far back as the later thirteenth century, in the reign of Philippe le Bel, the glass-workers of Champagne claimed similar rights, basing their pretensions on certain edicts of Constantine and on others found in the Theodosian Code! Charles VI., whose interest in the manufacture of glass has been already referred to (p. 137), in his _Lettres Royales_ of 1399, granted important rights to the glass-makers, ‘_à cause de la noblesse du dict mestier_.’ These privileges, however, were confined to those whose ancestors had followed the craft for several generations.