Gilles de Rais sold his castles to the Duke of Brittany, seized a priest in church, and was hanged; his heirs then claimed the lands back

Gilles de Rais was born at Champtocé castle in 1404 and inherited estates in Brittany, Anjou, Poitou, Maine and Angoumois. The historian Matei Cazacu puts his income at about 50,000 livres a year. He married his cousin Catherine de Thouars in 1422. After his grandfather died in 1432, his spending grew. From May 1435 he sold castles and land. On 2 July 1435 his brother and cousin obtained letters from Charles VII forbidding him to sell property or make contracts. The Duke of Brittany, Jean V, kept buying. Champtocé passed to the duke in June 1438. Before handing it over, Gilles had about forty children's skeletons taken from a tower and burned, according to the trial chronology. He sold Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte to the duke's treasurer, Geoffroi Le Ferron. On 15 May 1440 he led about 40 armed men into the church there and seized the treasurer's brother, the cleric Jean Le Ferron. In September he was arrested and tried by the church for heresy, sodomy and the murder of many children, and by the duke's court. He confessed under threat of torture and was hanged with two servants on 26 October 1440. His body was partly burned and buried at the Carmelite church in Nantes. His heirs later drew up a 70-folio memorandum of his lands and revenues. Cazacu argues the dukes were obliged to restore the estates to the heirs and repay the revenues^†. His only child, Marie, was born in 1429.