PALAIS DE JUSTICE—STATES, EXCHEQUER, AND PARLIAMENT OF NORMANDY—GUILD OF THE CONARDS—JOAN OF ARC—FOUNTAIN AND BAS-RELIEF IN THE PLACE DE LA PUCELLE—TOUR DE LA GROSSE HORLOGE—PUBLIC FOUNTAINS—RIVERS AUBETTE AND ROBEC—HOSPITALS—MINT.
(Rouen, June, 1818.)
Amongst the secular buildings of Rouen, the Palais de Justice holds the chief place, whether we consider the magnificence of the building, or the importance of the assemblies which once were convened within its precinct.
The three estates of the Duchy of Normandy, the parliament, composed of the deputies of the church, the nobility, and the good towns, usually held their meetings in the Palace of Justice. Until the liberties of France were wholly extirpated by Richelieu, this body opposed a formidable resistance to the crown; and the Charte Normande was considered as great a safeguard to the liberties of the subject, as Magna Charta used to be on your side of the channel. Here, also, the Court of Exchequer held its session. According to a fond tradition, this, the supreme tribunal of Normandy, was instituted by Rollo, the good Duke, whose very name seemed to be considered as a charm averting violence and outrage. This court, like our Aula Regia, long continued ambulatory, and attendant upon the person of the sovereign; and its sessions were held occasionally, and at his pleasure. The progress of society, however, required that the supreme tribunal should become stationary and permanent, that the suitors might know when and where they might prefer their claims. Philip the Fair, therefore, about the year 1300, began by enacting that the pleas should be held only at Rouen. Louis the XIIth remodelled the court, and gave it permanence; yielding in these measures to the prayer of the States of Normandy, and to the advice of his minister, the Cardinal d'Amboise. It was then composed of four presidents, and twenty-eight counsellors; thirteen being clerks; and the remainder laymen. The name of exchequer was perhaps unpleasing to the crown, as it reminded the Normans of the ancient independence of their duchy; and, in 1515, Francis Ist ordered that the court should thenceforward be known as the Parliament of Normandy; thus assimilating it in its appellation to the other supreme tribunals of the kingdom. There is an old poem extant, written in very lawyer-like rhyme, which invests all the cardinal virtues, and a great many supernumerary ones besides, with the offices of this most honorable court, in which purity is the usher, truth has a silk gown, and virginity enters the proceedings on the record.
"De ceste court grace est grand chanceliere,
Vertus ont lieu de présidens prudens:
Vérité est première conseillere,
Et pureté huyssiére là-dedans:
La greffiére est virginité féconde,
Et la concierge humilité profonde.
Pythié procure a vuider les discords,
Comme advocat, amour ayde aux accords.
De geolier vacque le seul office:
Aussy on voyt par officiers concors,
La noble court rendante à tous justice."
In the same style and strain is a ballad, which, thanks to the care of De Bourgueville, the author of the Antiquities of Caen, hath been preserved for the edification of posterity. It enumerates all the members of the court seriatim, and compares their lordships and worships, one after another, to the heroes and demi-gods of ancient story.
The parliament in its turn has given way to the Court of Assizes; and, where the states once deliberated, the electors of the department now come together for the purpose of naming the deputies who represent them in the great council of the nation;—such are the vicissitudes of all human institutions.
When the Jews were expelled from Normandy, in 1181, the Close, or Jewry, in which they dwelled, escheated to the king. The sons of Japhet spoiled the sons of Shem with pious alacrity. The debtor burnt his bond; the bailie seized the store of bezants; the synagogue was razed to the ground. In this Close the palace was afterwards built. The wise custom of Normandy was mooted on the spot where the law of Moses had once been taught; and, by a strange, perhaps an ominous, fatality, the judge held the scales of justice, where whilome the usurer had poised his balance.
The palace forms three sides of a quadrangle. The fourth is occupied by an embattled wall and an elaborate gate-way. The building was erected about the beginning of the sixteenth century; and, with all its faults, it is a fine adaptation of Gothic architecture to civil purposes. It is in the style which a friend of mine chooses to distinguish by the name of Burgundian architecture; and he tells me that he considers it as the parent of our Tudor style. Here, the windows in the body of the building take flattened elliptic heads; and they are divided by one mullion and one transom. The mouldings are highly wrought, and enriched with foliage. The lucarne windows are of a different design, and form the most characteristic feature of the front: they are pointed and enriched with mullions and tracery, and are placed within triple canopies of nearly the same form, flanked by square pillars, terminating in tall crocketed pinnacles, some of them fronted with open arches crowned with statues. The roof, as is usual in French and Flemish buildings of this date, is of a very high pitch, and harmonizes well with the proportions of the building. An oriel, or rather tower, of enriched workmanship projects into the court, and varies the elevations. On the left-hand side of the court, a wide flight of steps leads to the hall called la Salle des Procureurs, a place originally designed as an Exchange for the merchants of the city, who had previously been in the habit of assembling for that purpose in the cathedral. It is one hundred and sixty feet in length, by fifty in breadth.
"In this great hall," says Peter Heylin, "are the seats and desks of the procurators; every one's name written in capital letters over his head. These procurators are like our attornies; they prepare causes, and make them ready for the advocates. In this hall do suitors use, either to attend on, or to walk up and down, and confer with, their pleaders."—The attornies had similar seats in the ancient English courts of justice; and these seats still remain in the hall at Westminster, in which the Court of Exchequer holds its sittings. The walls of the Salle des Procureurs are adorned with chaste niches. The coved roof is of timber, plain and bold, and destitute either of the open tie-beams and arches, or the knot-work and cross timber which adorn our old English roofs. If the roof of our priory church was not ornamented, as last mentioned, it would nearly resemble that in question.—Below the hall is a prison; to its right is the room where the parliament formerly held its sittings, but which is now appropriated to the trial of criminal causes. The unfortunate Mathurin Bruneau, the soi-disant dauphin, was last year tried here, and condemned to imprisonment. He is treated in his place of confinement with ambiguous kindness. The poor wretch loves his bottle; and, being allowed to intoxicate himself to his heart's content, he is already reduced to a state of idiotism.—Heylin, who saw the building when it was in perfection, says, speaking of this Great Chamber, "that it is so gallantly and richly built, that I must needs confess it surpasseth all the rooms that ever I saw in my life. The palace of the Louvre hath nothing in it comparable; the ceiling is all inlaid with gold, yet doth the workmanship exceed the matter."—The ceiling which excited Heylin's admiration still exists. It is a grand specimen of the interior decoration of the times. The oak, which age has rendered almost as dark as ebony, is divided into compartments, covered with rich but whimsical carving, and relieved with abundance of gold. Over the bench is a curious old picture, a Crucifixion. Joseph and the Virgin are standing by the cross: the figures are painted on a gold ground; the colors deep and rich; the drawing, particularly in the arms, indifferent; the expression of the faces good. It was upon this picture that witnesses took the oaths before the revolution; and it is the only one of the six formerly in this situation that escaped destruction[[105]]. Round the apartment are gnomic sentences in letters of gold, reminding judges, juries, witnesses, and suitors, of their duties. The room itself is said to be the most beautiful in France for its proportions and quantity of light. In the Antiquités Nationales, is described and figured an elaborately wrought chimney-piece in the council-chamber, now destroyed, as are some fine Gothic door-ways, which opened into the chamber. The ceiling of the apartment called la seconde Chambre des Enquêtes, painted by Jouvenet, with a representation of Jupiter hurling his thunderbolts at Vice, is also unfortunately no more. It fell in, from a failure in the woodwork of the roof, on the first of April, 1812. It was among the most highly-esteemed productions of this master, and not the less remarkable for having been executed with the left hand, after a paralytic stroke had deprived him of the use of the other.
Millin observes, with much justice, that one of the most remarkable of the decrees that issued from this palace, was that which authorized the meetings of the Conards, a name given to a confraternity of buffoons, who, disguised in grotesque dresses, performed farces in the streets on Shrove Tuesday and other holidays. Nor is it a little indicative of the taste of the times, that men of rank, character, and respectability entered into this society, the members of which, amounting to two thousand five hundred, elected from among themselves a president, whom they dressed as an abbot[[106]], with a crozier and mitre, and, placing him on a car drawn by four horses, led him, thus attired, in great pomp through the streets; the whole of the party being masked, and personating not only the allegorical characters of avarice, lust, &c. but the more tangible ones of pope, king, and emperor, and with them those of holy writ. The seat of this guild was at Notre Dame de Bonnes Nouvelles.
In the cathedral itself the more notorious Procession des Fous was also formerly celebrated, in which, as you know, the ass played the principal part, and the choir joined in the hymn[[107]],—
"Orientis partibus
Adventavit Asinus," &c.
These, or similar ceremonies, call them if you please absurdities, or call them impieties, (you will in neither case be far from their proper name,) were in the early ages of Christianity tolerated in almost every place. Mr. Douce has furnished us with some curious remarks upon them in the eleventh volume of the Archaeologia, and Mr. Ellis in his new edition of Brand's Popular Antiquities. I am indebted to the first of these gentlemen for the knowledge that the inclosed etching, copied some time ago from a drawing by Mr. Joseph Harding, is allusive to the ceremony of the feast of fools, and does not represent a group of morris-dancers, as I had erroneously supposed. Indeed, Mr. Douce believes that many of the strange carvings on the misereres in our cathedrals have references to these practices. And yet, to the honor of England, they never appear to have been equally common with us as in France.—According to Du Cange[[108]], the confraternity of the Conards or Cornards was confined to Rouen and Evreux. I have not been able to ascertain when they were suppressed; but they certainly existed in the time of Taillepied, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, about fifty years previously to which they dropped their original name of Coqueluchers. At this time too they had evidently degenerated from the primary object of their institution, "ridendo castigare mores atque in omne quod turpitèr factum fuerat ridiculum immittere." Taillepied was an eye-witness of their practices; and he prudently contents himself with saying; "le fait est plus clair à le voir que je ne pourrois icy l'escrire."
At a short distance from the palace is a small square, called the Place de la Pucelle, a name which it has but recently acquired, in lieu of the more familiar appellation of le Marché aux Veaux. The present title records one of the most interesting events in the history of Rouen, the execution of the unfortunate Joan of Arc, which is said to have taken place on the very spot now covered by the monument that commemorates her fate. Three different ones have in succession occupied this place. The first was a cross, erected in 1454, only twenty-four years after her death; for even at this early period, the King of France had obtained from Pope Calixtus IIIrd, a bull directing the revision of her sentence, and he had caused her innocence to be acknowledged. The second was a fountain of delicate workmanship, consisting of three tiers of columns placed one above the other, on a triangular plan, the whole decorated with arabesques and statues of saints, while the Maid herself crowned the summit, and the water flowed through pipes that terminated in horses' heads. The present monument is inferior to the second, equally in design and in workmanship: it is a plain triangular pedestal, ornamented with dolphins at the base, and surmounted by the heroine in military costume. Of the two last, figures are given by Millin[[109]], who could not be expected to suffer a subject to escape him, so calculated for the gratification of national pride. In a preceding volume of the same work[[110]], he has represented the monument erected to her memory by Charles VIIth, upon the bridge at Orleans: the latter is commemorative of her triumphs; that at Rouen, only of her capture and death. But the King testified his gratitude by more substantial tokens: he ennobled her three brothers and their descendants; and even allowed the females of the family to confer their rank upon the persons whom they married, a privilege which they continued to enjoy till the time of Louis XIIIth, who abolished it in 1634.
In the square is a house within a court, now occupied as a school for girls, of the same æra as the Palais de Justice, and in the same Burgundian style, but far richer in its sculptures. The entire front is divided into compartments by slender and lengthened buttresses and pilasters. The intervening spaces are filled with basso-relievos, evidently executed at one period, though by different masters. A banquet beneath a window in the first floor, is in a good cinque-cento style. Others of the basso-relievos, represent the labors of the field and the vineyard; rich and fanciful in their costume, but rather wooden in their design: the Salamander, the emblem of Francis Ist, appears several times amongst the ornaments, and very conspicuously. I believe there is not a single square foot of this extraordinary building, which has not been sculptured.—On the north side extends a spacious gallery. Here the architecture is rather in Holbein's manner: foliaged and swelling pilasters, like antique candelabra, bound the arched windows. Beneath, is the well-known series of bas-reliefs, executed on marble tablets, representing the interview between Francis Ist of France, and Henry VIIIth of England, in the Champ du Drap d'or, between Guisnes and Ardres. They were first discovered by the venerable father Montfaucon, who engraved them in his Monumens de la Monarchie Française[[111]]; but to the greater part of our antiquaries at home, they are, perhaps, more commonly known by the miserable copies inserted in Ducarel's work, who has borrowed most of his plates from the Benedictine.—These sculptures are much mutilated, and so obscured by smoke and dirt, that the details cannot be understood without great difficulty. The corresponding tablets above the windows, are even in a worse condition; and they appear to have been almost unintelligible in the time of Montfaucon, who conjectures that they were allegorical, and probably intended to represent the triumph of religion. Each tablet contains a triumphal car, drawn by different animals, one by elephants, another by lions, and so on, and crowded with mythological figures and attributes.—A friend of mine, who examined them this summer, tells me, that he thinks the subjects are either taken from the triumphs of Petrarch, or imitated from the triumphs introduced in the Polifilo. Graphic representations of allegories are susceptible of so many variations, that an artist, embodying the ideas of the poet, might produce a representation bearing a close resemblance to the mythological processions of the mystic dream.—Of one of the most perfect of the historical subjects, I send you a drawing: it is the first in order in Montfaucon's work, and exhibits the suite of the King of England, on their way from the town of Guisnes, to meet the French monarch. Two of the figures might be mistaken for Henry himself and Wolsey, riding familiarly side by side; but these dignified personages have more important parts allotted them in the second and third compartments, where they appear in the full-blown honors of their respective characters.
The interior has been modernized; so that a beam covered with small carvings is the only remaining object of curiosity. On the top, a bunch of leaden thistles has been a sad puzzle to antiquaries, who would fain find some connection between the building and Scotland; but neither record nor tradition throw any light upon their researches. Montfaucon, copying from a manuscript written by the Abbé Noel, says, "I have more than once been told that Francis Ist, on his way through Rouen, lodged at this house; and it is most probable, that the bas-reliefs in question were made upon some of these occasions, to gratify the king by the representation of a festival, in which he particularly delighted." The gallery sculptures are very fine, and the upper tier is much in the style of Jean Goujon. It is not generally known that Goujon re-drew the embellishments of Beroald de Verville's translation of the Polifilo; and that these, beautiful as they are in the Aldine edition, acquired new graces from the French artist.—I have remarked that the allegorical tablets appear to coincide with the designs of the Polifilo: a more accurate examination might, perhaps, prove the fact; and then little doubt would remain. The building is much dilapidated; and, unless speedily repaired, these basso-relievos, which would adorn any museum, will utterly perish. In spite of neglect and degradations, the aspect of the mansion is still such that, as my friend observed, one would expect to see a fair and stately matron standing in the porch, attired in velvet, waiting to receive her lord.—In the adjoining house, once, probably, a part of the same, but now an inn, bearing the sign of la Pucelle, is shewn a circular room, much ornamented, with a handsome oriel conspicuous on the outside. In this apartment, the Maid is said to have been tried; but it is quite certain that not a stone of the building was then put of the quarry.
Hence I must take you, and still under the auspices of Millin[[112]], to the great town-clock, or, as it is here called, la Tour de la Grosse Horloge; and I cannot help wishing on the occasion, that I had half the powers of instructing and amusing which he possessed. Like the writers in our most popular Reviews, he uses the subjects which he places at the head of his articles as little more than a peg, whereon to hang whatever he knows connected with the matter; and the result is, that he is never read without pleasure or information. Such is peculiarly the case in the present instance, in which he takes an opportunity of giving the history of the origin of clocks, tracing them from the simple dial, and particularising the most curious and intricate contrivances of modern ingenuity. Another name of the tower which contains this clock, is la Tour du Beffroi, or, as we should say in English, the Belfry; for the two words have the same meaning, and it is not to be doubted but that they originated from the same root, the Anglo-Saxon bell, whence barbarous Latinists have formed Belfredus and Berfredus, terms for moveable towers used in sieges, and so denominated from their resemblance in form to bell-towers. I mention this etymology, because the French have misled themselves strangely on the subject; and one of them has wandered so widely in his conjectures, as to derive beffroi from bis effroi, supposing it to be the cause of double alarm! Happily, in the most alarming of all times for France, that of the revolution, this bell, though appointed the tocsin, had scarcely ever occasion to sound. There is, however, another purpose, alarming at all periods, and especially in a town built of wood, to which it is appropriated, and to which we only yesterday heard it applied, the ringing to announce a fire. The precautions taken against similar accidents in Rouen, are excellent, and they had need be so; for insurance-companies of any kind are unknown, I believe, in France[[113]], or exist only upon a most limited scale, at the foot of the Pyrenees, where the farmers mutually insure each other against the effects of the hail. The daily office of this bell is to sound the curfew, a practice which, under different names, is still kept up through Normandy. Here it rings nightly at nine. In other towns it rings at nine in winter only, but not till ten in summer. In some places it is called la retraite.
Adjoining the bell-tower is a fountain, ornamented with statues of Alpheus and Arethusa, united by Cupid; a specimen of the taste of the far-famed siècles de Louis XIV et de Louis XV, and a worthy companion of the water-works at Versailles. There are in Rouen more than thirty public fountains, all supplied by five different springs, among which, those of Yonville and of Darnétal are accounted to afford the purest water.—The Robec and the Aubette also flow through Rouen in artificial channels. St. Louis granted them both to the city in 1262; but it was the great benefactor of the place, the Cardinal d'Amboise, who brought them within the walls, by means of a canal, which he caused to be dug at his own expence. For a space of two leagues their banks are uninterruptedly lined with mills and manufactories of various descriptions; and it is this circumstance which has given rise to the saying, that Rouen is a wonderful place, for "that it has a river with three hundred bridges, and whose waters change their color ten times a day."
As a building, the fountain of Lisieux, decorated with a bas-relief representing Parnassus, with Apollo, the Muses, and Pegasus, is most frequently pointed out to strangers; a wretched specimen of wretched taste. Infinitely more interesting to us are the Gothic fountains or conduits, which are now wholly wanting in England. Such is the fountain de la Croix de Pierre, which, in shape, style, and ornaments, resembles the monumental crosses erected by; our King Edward Ist, for his Queen Eleanor. The water flows from pipes in the basement. The stone statues, which filled the tabernacles, were destroyed during the revolution: they have been replaced by others in wood.—The fountain de la Crosse is of inferior size, and more recent date. It is a polygon, with sides of pannelled work, each compartment occupied by a pointed arch, with tracery in the spandrils. It ends in a short truncated pyramid, which, in Millin's time, was surmounted by a royal crown[[114]]. Its name is taken from a house, at whose corner it stands, and on whose roof was originally a crozier.
Writing to a friend may be regarded, if we extend to writing the happy comparison which Lord Bacon has applied to conversation, not as walking in a high-road which leads direct to a house, but rather as strolling through a country intersected with a variety of paths, in which the traveller wanders as fancy or accident directs. Hence I shall scarcely apologize for my abrupt transition to another very different subject, the hospitals.—There are at Rouen two such establishments, situated at opposite extremes of the town, the Hospice Général and the Hôtel Dieu, more commonly called la Madeleine. The latter is appropriated only to the sick; the former is also open to the aged, to foundlings, to paupers, and to lunatics. For the poor, I have been able to hear of no other provision; and poor-laws, as you know, have no existence in France; yet, even here, in a manufacturing town, and at a season of distress, beggary is far from extreme. These institutions, like all the rest at Rouen, are said to be under excellent management.
The annual expences of la Madeleine are estimated at two hundred and forty thousand-francs[[115]]; out of which sum, no less than forty-seven thousand francs are expended in bread. The number of individuals admitted here, during the first nine months of 1805, the last authentic statement I have been able to procure, was two thousand seven hundred and seventeen: during the same period, two thousand one hundred and fifty-eight were discharged, and two hundred and seventy died. The building is modern and handsome, and situated at the end of a fine avenue. The church, a Corinthian edifice, and indisputably the handsomest building of that description at Rouen, is generally admired. The Hospice Général, destitute as it is of architectural magnificence, cannot be visited without satisfaction. When I was at this hospital, the old men who are housed there were seated at their dinner, and I have seldom witnessed a more pleasing sight. They exhibited an appearance of cleanliness, propriety, good order, and comfort, equally creditable to themselves and to the institution. The number of inmates usually resident in this building is about two thousand; and they consisted, in 1805, of one hundred and sixty aged men, one hundred and eighty aged women, six hundred children, and eight hundred and twenty-five invalids. Among the latter were forty lunatics. The food here allowed to the helpless poor is of good quality; and, as far as I could learn, is afforded in sufficient quantity: there are also two work-shops; in one of which, articles are manufactured for the use of the house; in the other, for sale.
The principal towns of France, as was anciently the case in England, have each its mint. The numismatic antiquities of this kingdom are yet involved in considerable obscurity; but it is said that the monetary privileges of the towns were first settled by Charles the Bald[[116]], who, about the year 835, enacted, that money, which had previously only been coined in the royal palace itself, or in places where the sovereign was present, should be struck in future at Paris, Rouen, Rheims, Sens, Chalons sur Saone, Mesle in Poitou, and Narbonne. At present, the money struck at Rouen is impressed with the letter B, indicating that the mint is second only to that of Paris; for the city has remained in possession of the right of coinage throughout all its various changes of masters: it now holds it in common with ten other, cities in the kingdom. Ducarel[[117]] has figured two very scarce silver pennies, coined here by William the Conqueror, before the invasion of England; and Snelling and Ruding[[118]] detail ordinances for the regulation of the mintage of Rouen, during the reign of Henry Vth. I have not been able, however, to procure in the city any specimens of these, or of other Norman coins; and in fact the native spot of articles of virtu is seldom the place where they can be procured either genuine or in abundance. Greek medals, I am told, are regularly exported from Birmingham to Athens, for the supply of our travelled gentlemen; and, if groats and pennies should ever rise in the market, I doubt not but that they will find their way in plenty into the old towns of Normandy. There is not, at Rouen, any public collection of the productions of the mint. Since the annexation of the duchy to the crown of France, no coins have been struck here, except the common silver currency of the kingdom: the manufacture of medals and of gold coins is exclusively the privilege of the Parisian mint. The establishment is under the care of a commissary and assay-master, appointed by the crown, but not salaried. Their pay depends upon the amount of money coined, on which they are allowed one and a half per cent., and are left to find silver where they can; so that, in effect, it is little more than a private concern. The work is performed by four die-presses, moved by levers, each of which requires ten men; and about twenty thousand pieces can be produced daily from each press. But this method of working is attended with unequal pressure, and causes both trouble and uncertainty: it is even necessary that each coin should be separately weighed. The extreme superiority of the machinery of our own mint, where the whole operation is performed by steam, with a rapidity and accuracy altogether astonishing, affords Just reason for exultation to an Englishman.—It is true, that the execution of our bank paper rather counterbalances such feelings of complacency.
Footnotes:
[105] This appears from the following inscription now upon a silver tablet placed near it.—"Ce tableau est celui qui fut donné par Louis XII, en 1499, à l'Exchiquier, lorsqu'il le rendit permanent. C'est le seul de tous les ornemens de ce palais qui ait échappé aux ravages de la révolution: il a été conservé par les soins de M. Gouel, graveur, et par lui remis à la cour royale de Rouen qui l'a fait placer ici, comme un monument de la piété d'un roi, à qui sa bonté mérita le surnom de père du peuple, et dont les vertus se reproduisent aujourd'hui dans la personne non moins chérie que sacrée de sa majesté très chrétienne, Louis XVIII, 15 Janvier, 1816."
[106] Du Cange, (I. p. 24.) quoting from a book printed at Rouen, in 1587, under the title of Les Triomphes de l'Abbaye des Conards, &c. gives the following curious mock patent from the abbot of this confraternity, addressed to somebody of the name of De Montalinos.—
"Provisio Cardinalatus Rothomagensis Julianensis, &c.
"Paticherptissime Pater, &c.
"Abbas Conardorum et inconardorum ex quacumque Natione, vel genitatione sint aut fuerint: Dilecto nostro filio naturali et illegitimo Jacobo à Montalinasio salutem et sinistram benedictionem. Tua talis qualis vita et sancta reputatio cum bonis servitiis ... et quod diffidimus quòd postea facies secundùm indolem adolescentiæ ac sapientiæ tuæ in Conardicis actibus, induxenunt nos, &c. Quocirca mandamus ad amicos, inimicos et benefactores nostros qui ex hoc sæculo transierunt vel transituri sunt ... quatenus habeant te ponere, statuere, instalare et investire tàm in choro, chordis et organo, quàm in cymbalis bene sonantibus, faciantque te jocundari et ludere de libertatibus franchisiis, &c.... Voenundatum in tentorio nostro prope sanctum Julianum sub annulo peccatoris anno pontificatus nostri, 6. Kalend. fabacearum, hora verò noctis 17. more Conardorum computando, &c."
[107] The music of this hymn, or prose, as it is termed in the Catholic Rituals, is given in the Atlas to Millin's Travels through the Southern Departments of France, plate 4.
[108] See under the article Abbas Conardorum, I. p. 24.
[109] Antiquités Nationales, III. No. 36.
[110] Vol. II. No. 9.
[111] Vol. IV. t. 29, 30, 31.
[112] Antiquités Nationales, III. No. 30.
[113] This ceased to be the case almost immediately after this remark was made; for, on my return to France, in 1819, I observed on the whole road from Dieppe to Paris, the letters P A C I, or others, equally meaning pour assurance contre l'incendie, painted upon the fronts of the houses.
[114] Antiquités Nationales, III. article 30, p. 26.—(In the figure, however, which accompanies this article, the summit is mutilated, as I saw it.)
[115] Peuchet, Description Topographique et Statistique de la France, Département de la Seine Inférieure, p. 33.
[116] Histoire de la Haute Normandie, I. p. 94.
[117] Anglo-Norman Antiquities, p. 33. t. 3.
[118] Annals of the Coinage of Britain, I. p. 505-507.