Pembroke's ship was Jean de Gruyere, and when at
last, grappled by four great galleons, they were boarded and every
resisting arm subdued, he was taken prisoner with Pembroke. On another
vessel, fighting as bravely, Othon de Grandson was also taken prisoner
and with Jean de Gruyere was transported in captivity to Spain. Dearly
paying for their ambition and their new titles, they were furnished in
recompense for their valor with lands in Spain by a Burgundian noble,
and by industrious commercial enterprise paying their ransom and their
debts, after two years regained their liberty and their homes.

Rodolphe IV, reigning count of Gruyere, displayed in his long career no
quality worthy of his generous and high spirited father, no trace of the
conciliatory wisdom or devoted piety of his mother. Calculating in his
marriages, he was unjust and even dishonest with his people, whom he
forced to pay twice over for their exemptions and their privileges.
Still dishonestly withholding the signed and purchased acknowledgement
of their new privileges from his subjects, he was surprised alone at
night in the castle by a doughty peasant, who forced the paper from his
unwilling hands and threw it out of the window to a waiting confederate.
Left in charge of the Savoyard troops who had driven the invading
Viscounti from the Valais, and entrusted with the guardianship of the
chateaux and prisoners won by the Savoyard arms, he exacted and obtained
large sums for his services, although those services consisted in a
complete surprise and defeat at the hands of the sturdy inhabitants of
the Valais, wherein, except for the heroic defence of the very subjects
he had so oppressed, he would himself have perished. From the benefits
of the peace which was ultimately established in the Valais, these same
loyal subjects were excluded.

How greatly Count Rodolphe was lacking in the noble and humanitarian
qualities which had so generally characterized the counts of Gruyere,
was shown in his dealings with his young relative Othon de Grandson. The
comrade of his brother, Jean de Gruyere, in his French campaigns and in
his long captivity in Spain, Othon de Grandson was later doubly related
to Count Rodolphe, as brother-in-law of his first wife Marguerite
d'Alamandi, and as nephew of his second countess, Marguerite de
Grandson. The tragic hero of an unjust drama of prosecution which
divided in opposing camps the nobles of Romand Switzerland, Othon de
Gran