ore solid gift of twenty thousand florins, had been her
oblations to the Pope. Her husband, Otho of Brunswick, had gone to Rome
to pay his personal homage. His object was to determine in his own favor
the succession to the realm. The reception of Otho was cold and
repulsive; he returned in disgust. The Queen eagerly listened to
suspicions, skilfully awakened, that Urban meditated the resumption of
the fief of Naples, and its grant to the rival house of Hungary. She
became the sworn ally of the cardinals at Anagni. Honorato Gaetani,
Count of Fondi, one of the most turbulent barons of the land, demanded
of the Pontiff twenty thousand florins advanced on loan to Gregory XI.
Urban not only rejected the claim, declaring it a personal debt of the
late Pope, not of the holy see, he also deprived Gaetani of his fief,
and granted it to his mortal enemy, the Count San Severino. Gaetani
began immediately to seize the adjacent castles in Campania, and invited
the cardinals to his stronghold at Fondi. The Archbishop of Arles,
chamberlain of the late Pope, leaving the castle of St. Angelo under the
guard of a commander who long refused all orders from Pope Urban,
brought to Anagni the jewels and ornaments of the papacy, which had been
carried for security to St. Angelo. The prefect of the city, De Vico,
Lord of Viterbo, had been won over by the Cardinal of Amiens.

The four Italian cardinals still adhered to Pope Urban. They labored
hard to mediate between the conflicting parties. Conferences were held
at Zagarolo and other places; when the French cardinals had retired to
Fondi, the Italians took up their quarters at Subiaco. The Cardinal of
St. Peter's, worn out with age and trouble, withdrew to Rome, and soon
after died. He left a testamentary document declaring the validity of
the election of Urban. The French cardinals had declared the election
void; they were debating the next step. Some suggested the appointment
of a coadjutor. They were now sure of the support of the King of France,
who would not easily surrender his influence over a pope at Avignon, and
of the Queen of Naples, estranged by the pride of Urban, and secretly
stimulated by the Cardinal Orsini, who had not forgiven his own loss of
the tiara. Yet even now they seemed to shrink from the creation of an
antipope. Urban precipitated and made inevitable this disastrous event.
He was now alone; the Cardinal of St. Peter's was dead; Florence, Milan,
and the Orsini stood al