The court remained at Paris till the feast of St. Martin in the winter, the time being spent partly in festivities and partly in business connected with parliament. On the accession of a new King all the judicial officers had to be re-invested[9] or they were _désappointés_; a word which became obsolete in French, was adopted by the English, and from them has been re-adopted by the French, but with a different signification.
“In 1352, on Monday the vigil of the Conception,” says the Monk of Saint Denis, “the King gave the duchy of Normandy to Monseigneur Charles, his eldest son, Dauphin de Vienne et Comte de Poitiers, and on the next day, Tuesday, the day of the feast of the Conception beforesaid, Monseigneur Charles did him homage for it, at the hostel of Maistre Martin de Mello, canon of Paris, of the cloister of Notre Dame.”
After which the Prince always called himself Duc de Normandie, greatly preferring the title to that of Dauphin.
The Dauphin and Dauphine lived chiefly at Vivier-en-Brie, a castle in the midst of the woods not far from Vincennes. This château had been given to the father of the Dauphin, now King, when he married his mother, Bonne de Luxembourg, by his grandfather, Philippe VI. Here the Dauphin afterwards founded a chantry or chapel with fourteen ecclesiastics to chant the offices and give opportunity to the officers who followed the court to perform their devotions.
Jean, who had been at war with the Spaniards, considering the constant strife which, with short intervals of imperfectly observed truce, was always going on between France and England, was naturally anxious to conclude a peace with the King of Spain, whose subjects were extremely desirous that he should marry a French princess. In 1352 a treaty was arranged between the two countries, in which this was one of the clauses; and it was decided that one of the daughters of the Duc de Bourbon should be selected. Nieces of the late King of France and sisters of the future Queen of that country, one of them would be a suitable wife for their young King. With some difficulty they induced him to consent, and a Spanish embassy was despatched to France to conclude the alliance.
The character of Pedro the Cruel was notorious, even for the lawless times in which he lived. His early friend the King of Navarre, though by no means scrupulous, afterwards abandoned his alliance in disgust; and although at this time he was not more than twenty years old, his crimes had already given him a reputation of which the Duc de Bourbon must have known quite well. But the King of France had set his heart upon this alliance, and had promised to give a dowry of three hundred thousand florins. Pedro was to settle various castles, towns, and estates upon the Princess, and the Duke, whose eldest daughter was to be Queen of France, was well contented to see the second Queen of Spain. For it was upon the Princess Blanche that the choice had fallen. As long as one of his girls wore the crown of Spain, the Duke did not care which it might be. He introduced the ambassador into the room where they all were, so that he might choose.[10] And as Blanche, the eldest next to the Dauphine of France, seemed to him the most beautiful, he fixed upon her; and the marriage took place during the summer of that year.