Meanwhile, the great ones of the earth were haggling over the price which should be paid for their victim, and Charles VII. made no effort to save her. Jean de Luxembourg sold her to Philippe de Bourgogne, and he treated with the English representative. This representative has had heaped upon his head the contemptuous anathemas of historians, both French and English; nor is he undeserving of the most severe phrases yet coined to express reprobation. Pierre Cauchon--it is a wonder so few have thought of the swinish suggestiveness of the very name--was merely a time-serving priest whose shameless policy of intrigue had already got him made Bishop of Beauvais, and would soon, he fondly hoped, give him the archbishopric of Rouen. In furtherance of his ambitious projects he had become thoroughly English, and fawned upon the rich Cardinal Winchester; but though Winchester nominated him to the archbishopric, neither the Pope nor the cathedral chapter of Rouen would consent to receive him as archbishop. Cauchon, as Bishop of Beauvais, claimed the right to try the heretical sorceress who had been captured on the borders of the diocese. In the same document in which he preferred this claim he made offers, on behalf of the English, to buy his victim. A king's ransom, ten thousand livres in gold, was offered for Jeanne, and as refusal would have involved not only the loss of this sum, but the loss of English friendship, the Duke of Burgundy sold his captive, who was delivered up to the ecclesiastical authorities and the English party in November, 1430. Under the barbarous customs then in vogue it would not have been impossible for the English to put her to death under military law; the inviolability of prisoners of war was by no means an established principle among the nations. But La Pucelle's death alone would not suffice; she must first be discredited in the eyes of the world; it must be shown that the consecration of Charles VII. had been effected with the aid of one condemned by the laws of God and of the Church, that the consecration was, in fact, but an impious mockery of religious rites, because a sorceress had led him to the altar. For this reason it was determined to deliver Jeanne to the mercies of the ecclesiastical courts. Cauchon was rector of the University of Paris, and could command the assent of that body to whatever seemed to him expedient; the representative of the Inquisition, who seemed decidedly averse to having anything to do with the proceedings, was likewise overawed by Cauchon and by the English cardinal. All that remained to do was to constitute the court and to bring the accused before it for trial.