The king about this time, left Amboise for Senlis, where he remained while his commissioners and those from Burgundy were labouring to bring about a peace. At length, the truce was prolonged to the middle of the ensuing May, in the expectation of a more lasting agreement being concluded before then. The king went from Senlis to Ermenonville in Santerre, belonging to master Pierre L'Orfevre, counsellor in the chamber of accounts where he staid a month,--during which time, the duke of Bourbon, whom the king had repeatedly sent for, came at last, but did not remain more than ten or twelve days, and returned, with the king's leave, to his own country, to celebrate Easter, promising to come back the Sunday after Easter which he did. On the 30th of March, John Hardy, before mentioned, was condemned by the court of parliament to be taken to the gate of the prisons of the Conciergerie, and there put into a tumbrel and drawn before the town-house, where a scaffold had been erected for the quartering of his body, according to the sentence, which was executed. His head, placed on the point of a lance, was to remain in front of the town-house, and his four quarters were sent to four of the principal towns, at the extremities of the kingdom,--on each of which an inscription was to be put, declaring the cause why they were thus placed,--and the body was ordered to be burnt, and reduced to cinders at the place of execution. All the houses of the said John Hardy, particularly that in which he had been born, were to be razed to the ground, and no buildings were to be thereon erected in future; an inscription was also to be placed on the spot, declaratory of the enormity of the offence, and why these buildings had been destroyed. Hardy was executed in the presence of the lord de Gaucourt, king's lieutenant, the first president of the parliament Boulenger, the two provosts, and sheriffs, and other principal persons of the town; and he had a celebrated doctor in divinity, called doctor Hue, assigned to him for the care of his soul. On the Saturday following, the head of Hardy, which had been placed on a lance before the town-house, was taken down, nobody knew how, and thrown into a cellar hard by. This day, a handsome embassy came to Paris from the king of Arragon, and was honourably received there by the count de Penthievre[47], the lord de Gaucourt and others, who feasted them well in divers parts of Paris until Palm Sunday, when their festivities ceased on account of the approaching Passion-week. The king arrived at Paris after Easter, the 16th day of April, in the year 1474. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 46: Eldest daughter. Anne of France, a most accomplished woman. She made a great figure in the succeeding reign.] [Footnote 47: Count de Penthievre--Jean de Brosse--had, by his wife Louisa de Laval, Réné, who married Jeanne, only daughter to the historian Philip de Comines.] [A.D. 1474.] CHAP. XVII.