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The fourth husband of “Building Bess” was no less a person than George Talbot, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury. Though the name does not appear in the great roll of the prominent soldiers at the battle of Hastings, the first Talbot—then Talebot—of whom anything noteworthy is recorded, won the first title, a barony, for his family at the close of the career of William the First. Thenceforward the Talbots march magnificently through the history of England—great gentlemen, castellans, commanders, governors, judges, lords-lieutenant. They wielded authority in Wales, fought in France, Scotland, Ireland, Castile, occasionally fell under suspicion of conspiracy, and emerged without hurt. Once and once only was their pride humbled in the dust, when the hitherto invincible tactics of John Talbot, the greatest general of his day, the chief glory of all the Talbots before and since, were overcome by the generalship of the Maid of Orleans. It must have hit the great general very hard to find himself in prison on French soil for three long years at the hands of a woman. Neither force nor strategy freed him, but mere money. He had married a rich wife—heiress to all “Hallamshire,”^[8] including the castle of Sheffield. In 1432 he agreed to pay a large ransom, and hurried back to England, bursting with purpose and revenge. Instantly he raised a fresh force, rejoined the English army in France, and fought with such terrible and triumphant results that his name, like that of Bonaparte, figured for generations as a bogy with which to scare fractious children. It was this tremendous campaign which won for his race the great earldom of Shrewsbury.