The worst of these servile churchmen was the wretched Bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon. Many other prelates were Cæsar’s friends, but he sits exalted in solitary infamy. He came to the Burgundian camp and claimed his victim in the name of Bedford, Regent of France for the English King. Had Jeanne been detained by the Burgundians, it is impossible to believe that Charles VII. would not have procured her release. Had she been held as a prisoner of war by the English, it is very likely that the shame of holding a woman captive in their hands would have made it possible to arrange for her ransom. But once charged with heresy and taken out of the hands of the Burgundians such hopes and chances were closed. Still, as an ecclesiastical prisoner she would have been entitled to counsel and guidance by religious persons, the Church offering admonition before preferring grave charges of rebellion against any of her children. But this would render her punishment uncertain. Grave doctors of the law and eminent churchmen had at Poitiers, after long inquiry, declared her worthy of trust and they might do so again. Therefore it was determined that she should be held in a lay prison though charged with an ecclesiastical offence. Cut off in this way from all spiritual help and instruction, she was to be brought, when the process was ripe, before a well-chosen court bent on her destruction, and ready to entangle her in questions which might entrap her into erroneous or heretical statements. And once more we are confronted, if we try to rationalise her life and put away all belief in inspiration, with the amazing problem as to where and how this untutored girl drew her stores of logic, law, and theology. The trial took place in Rouen Castle,[3] the seat of Bedford’s government in France. The choosing of her judges was committed to Cauchon, who selected the most sturdy adherents of the English. No formal charge was preferred, but Jeanne was interrogated. This course was severely condemned by a distinguished lawyer named Lohier, who puts clearly before us the procedure and principles that should govern such a hearing. There should be in the first place in all such trials a definite indictment of the charges advanced against the accused, who in turn ought to have due time to answer all the allegations with the assistance of counsel. In Jeanne’s particular case, seeing that she had been already practically tried and acquitted at Poitiers at a trial presided over by the Archbishop of Rheims, the metropolitan of the Bishop of Beauvais, it was putting her twice in peril for the same offence, and on the second occasion before an inferior court, a thing contrary to law and reason. Moreover the venue was wrong. She had been captured in one diocese as an ecclesiastical prisoner, and she was to be tried in another, and no assent of the chapter of Rouen could give jurisdiction in such a case.