her husband and her eldest son were seized and accused of the poisoning, •when the redoubted Count De la Marche declared his wife was belied, and made appeal to battle by challenging his accuser, Prince Alphonso, to single combat. But Alphonso, being not over-brave, excused himself, on the plea that he never fought with treason-polluted felons. Then the son of De la Marche offered to fight in the place of his father ; but this challenge was met with the same refusal as the former. Meanwhile Poitou rose in insurrection, and when, shortly afterwards, the sad tidings of these troubles reached the cars of Isabella, now called the wicked Jezebel by the French and Poictevins, who to her base influence attributed their disastrous warfare, she, overcome by misfortune, poverty, and a consciousness of her many misdeeds, sunk into a decline, which terminated her existence in 1246. "Shedied," says Matthew Paris, "in her secret chamber, at Fontevraud, much in need of the spiritual benefit to be derived from the alms of the poor." Her remains were interred without pomp in the churchyard of Fontevraud. About eight years afterwards, her son, Henry the Third, on visiting the abbey, was so shocked on beholding his mother, even in death, cast off from the fellowship of his royal ancestors, that he had her remains removed to the choir of the church, where he erected for her a noble tomb, which has since been destroyed : all that now remains being her mutilated statue, which, thanks to Mr. Stothard, has been removed by the French government from the prison cellar where he found it in 1816, and thus preserved from total destruction. After the death of Isabella, Count de la Marche became reconciled to Louis of France, afterwards styled St. Louis, and with him set out in 1218, on a disastrous crusade in the Holy Land, where, on reaching Damietta, the Count was slain in a fierce encounter with the Saracens. What family Isabella Jiad by Countde la Marche is not known. Speed says, " by this marriage she had divers children," and from other sources we learn that her eldest son succeeded to hisparent's patrimony as Hugh the Eleventh, Count de la Marche and Angoulcme, and that shortly after their mother's death, four of the sons and one of the daughters came to England, and were loaded with favours by their half-brother, Henry the Third. Of these, Guy de Lusignan, a knight of some renown, was killed at the battle of Lewes ; William dc Valence was married to Joanna, the rich heiress of Warin de Muntchesnil, and became Earl of Pembroke ; Ethelmar, who was in holy orders, was, after much opposition from the clergy, elevated to the rich see of Winchester ; Geoffrey de Lusignan was created Lord of D astings, and the Lady Eliza was espoused to the powerful John, Earl Warrenne