The interpretation of this was that the King loved and enjoyed a
woman of Paris, who was the daughter of a counsellor of the Court of
Parliament, named Monsieur le Coq. And she was married to an advocate at
the bar of Parliament, a very skilful man, named Monsieur James Disome,
who was possessed of much property which the King confiscated. Soon
afterwards the King sent eight or ten of his principal gentlemen to sup
at the sign of the Castle in the Rue de la Juiverie, and thither, under
the false pretence of making him play the said farce, was summoned
Messire Cruche, who came in the evening, by torch-light, and was
constrained to play the farce by the said gentlemen. But thereupon, at
the very beginning, he was stripped to his shirt, and wonderfully well
whipped with straps until he was in a state of the utmost wretchedness.
At the end there was a sack all ready to put him in, that he might be
thrown from the window, and then carried to the river; and this would
assuredly have come to pass had not the poor man cried out very loudly
and shown them the tonsure on his head. And all these things were done,
so it was owned, on the King’s behalf.”
It is probable that this intrigue between the King and Jane Disome
ceased soon after the former’s accession; at all events Francis did not
evince much indulgence for the man whose wife he had seduced. Under date
April, 1518, the Journal dun Bourgeois de Paris mentions the arrest of
several advocates and others for daring to discuss the question of the
Pragmatic Sanction. Disome was implicated in the matter but appears to
have escaped for a time; however in September of that year we find him
detained at Orleans and subjected to the interrogatories of various
royal Commissioners. The affair was then adjourned till the following
year, when no further mention is made of it.
Disome died prior to 1521, for in September of that year we find his
wife remarried to Peter Perdrier, Lord of Baubigny, notary and secretary
to the King, and subsequently clerk of the council to the city of Paris.
Perdrier was a man of considerable means; for when the King raised a
forced loan of silver plate in September 1521, we find him taxed to the
amount of forty marcs of silver (26 1/2 lbs. troy); or only ten _marcs_
less than each counsellor of Parliament was required to contribute. Five
and twenty years later, he lost his wife Jane, the curious record
of whose death runs as follows: “The year one thousand five hundred
forty-six, after Easter, at her house (hôtel) Rue de la Parcheminerie,
called Rue des Blancs-Manteaux, died the late Demoiselle Jane Lecoq,
daughter of Master John Lecoq, Counsellor of the Court of Parliament,
deceased; in her lifetime wife of noble Master Peter Perdrier, Lord of
Baubigny, &c, and previously wife of the late Master James Disome, in
his lifetime advocate at the Court of Parliament and Lord of Cernay in
Beauvaisis; and the said Demoiselle Jane Lecoq (2) is here--buried with
her father and mother, and departed this life on the 23rd day of April
1546. Pray ye God for her soul.”