Ipsum qui nuper Regno privare volebat."
The vicissitudes to which the county of Evreux was doomed to be subject, did not wholly cease upon its annexation to the crown of France. It passed, in the fourteenth century, into the hands of the Kings of Navarre, so as to form a portion of their foreign territory; and early in the fifteenth, it fell by right of conquest under English sovereignty.--Philip the Bold conferred it, in 1276, upon Louis, his youngest son; and from him descended the line of Counts of Evreux, who, originating in the royal family of France, became Kings of Navarre. The kingdom was brought into the family by the marriage of Philip Count of Evreux with Jane daughter of Louis Hutin, King of France and Navarre, to whom she succeeded as heir general. Charles IIIrd, of Navarre, ceded Evreux by treaty to his namesake, Charles VIth of France, in 1404; and he shortly after bestowed it upon John Stuart, Lord of Aubigni, and Constable of Scotland.--Under Henry Vth, our countrymen took the city in 1417, but we were not long allowed to hold undisturbed possession of it; for, in 1424, it was recaptured by the French. Their success, however, was only ephemeral: the battle of Verneuil replaced Evreux in the power of the English before the expiration of the same year; and we kept it till 1441, when the garrison was surprised, and the town lost, though not without a vigorous resistance.--Towards the close of the following century, the earldom was raised into a Duché pairie, by Charles IXth, who, having taken the lordship of Gisors from his brother, the Duc d'Alençon, better known by his subsequent title of Duc d'Anjou, recompenced him by a grant of Evreux. Upon the death of this prince without issue, in 1584, Evreux reverted to the crown, and the title lay dormant till 1652, when Louis XIVth exchanged the earldom with the Duc de Bouillon, in return for the principality of Sedan. In his family it remained till the revolution, which, amalgamating the whole of France into one common mass of equal rights and laws, put an end to all local privileges and other feudal tenures.
Evreux, at present, is a town containing about eight thousand inhabitants, a great proportion of whom are persons of independent property, or rentiers, as the French call them. Hence it has an air of elegance, seldom to be found in a commercial, and never in a manufacturing town; and to us this appearance was the more striking, as being the first instance of the kind we had seen in Normandy. The streets are broad and beautifully neat. The city stands in the midst of gardens and orchards, in a fertile valley, watered by the Iton, and inclosed towards the north and south by ranges of hills. The river divides into two branches before it reaches the town, both which flow on the outside of the walls. But, besides these, a portion of its waters has been conducted through the centre of the city, by means of a canal dug by the order of Jane of Navarre. This Iton, like the Mole, in Kent, suddenly loses itself in the ground, near the little town of Damville, about twenty miles south of Evreux, and holds its subterranean course for nearly two miles. A similar phenomenon is observable with a neighboring stream, the Risle, between Ferrière and Grammont[[46]]: in both cases it is attributed, I know not with what justice, to an abrupt change in the stratification of the soil.
Footnotes:
[36] This curious transaction, which took place in the year 1119, is related with considerable näiveté by Ordericus Vitalis, p. 852, as follows:--"Henricus Rex rebellibus ultrà parcere nolens, pagum Ebroicensem adiit, et Ebroas cum valida manu impugnare coepit. Sed oppidanis, qui intrinsecus erant, cum civibus viriliter repugnantibus, introire nequivit. Erant cum illo Ricardus filius ejus, et Stephanus Comes nepos ejus, Radulfus de Guader, et maxima vis Normannorum. Quibus ante Regem convocatis in unnm, Rex dixit ad Audinum Episcopum. "Videsne, domine Præsul, quòd repellimur ab hostibus, nec eos nisi per ignem subjugare poterimus? Verùm, si ignis immittitur, Ecclesiæ comburentur, et insontibus ingens damnum inferetur. Nunc ergo, Pastor Ecclesiæ, diligentèr considera, et quod utilius prospexeris providè nobis insinua. Si victoria nobis per incendium divinitùs conceditur, opitulante Deo, Ecclesiæ detrimenta restaurabuntur: quia de thesauris nostris commodos sumptus gratantèr largiemur. Unde domus Dei, ut reor, in melius reædificabuntur." Hæsitat in tanto discrimine Præsul auxius, ignorat quid jubeat divinæ dispositioni competentius: nescit quid debeat magis velle vel eligere salubrius. Tandem prudentum consultu præcepit ignem immitti, et civitatem concremari, ut ab anathematizatis proditoribus liberaretur, et legitimis habitatoribus restitueretur. Radulfus igitur de Guader a parte Aquilonali primus ignem injecit, et effrenis flamma per urbem statim volavit, et omnia (tempos enim autumni siccum erat) corripuit. Tunc combusta est basilica sancti Salvatoris, quam Sanctimoniales incolebant, et celebris aula gloriosæ virginis et matris Mariæ, cui Præsul et Clerus serviebant, ubi Pontificalem Curiam parochiani frequentabant. Rex, et cuncti Optimales sui Episcopo pro Ecclesiarum combustione vadimonium supplicitèr dederunt, et uberes impensas de opibus suis ad restaurationem earum palam spoponderunt."
[37] Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni, p. 309.
[38] Gallia Christiana, XI. p. 606.
[39] From the manner in, which Ducarel speaks of these statues, (Anglo-Norman Antiquities, p. 85.) he leaves it to be understood, that they were in existence in his time; but it is far from certain that this was the case; for the whole of his account of them is no more than a translation from the following passage in Le Brasseur's Histoire du Comté d'Evreux, p. 11.--"Le Diocèse d'Evreux a été si favorisé des grâces de Dieu, qu'on ne voit presqu'aucun temps où l'Hérésie y ait pénétré, même lorsque les Protestans inondoient et corrompoient toute la France, et particulierement la Normandie. On ne peut pas cependant desavoüer qu'il y a eu de temps en temps, quelques personnes qui se sont livrées à l'erreur; et l'on peut remarquer quatre Statuës attachées à deux piliers au dehors du chancel de l'Eglise Cathédrale du côté du Cimetiere, dont trois représentent trois Chanoines, la tête couverte de leurs Aumuces selon la coûtume de ce temps-là, et une quatrième qui représente un Chanoine à un pilier plus éloigné, la tête nuë, tenant sa main sur le coeur comme un signe de son repentir; parce que la tradition dit, qu'aïant été atteint et convaincu du crime d'hérésie, le Chapitre l'avoit interdit des fonctions de son Bénéfice; mais qu'aïant ensuite abjuré son erreur, le même Chapitre le rétablit dans tous ses droits, honneurs, et privileges: cependant il fut ordonné qu'en mémoire de l'égarement et de la pénitence de ce Chanoine, ces Statuës demeureroient attachées aux piliers de leur Eglise, lorsqu'elle fût rébâtie des deniers de Henry I. Roy d'Angleterre, par les soins d'Audoenus Evêque d'Evreux."
[40] This was not the first, nor the only, contest, which was fought by Taurinus with Satan. Their struggles began at the moment of the saint's coming to Evreux, and did not even terminate when his life was ended. But the devil was, by the power of his adversary, brought to such a helpless state, that, though he continued to haunt the city, where the people knew him by the name of Gobelinus, he was unable to injure any one.--All this is seriously related by Ordericus Vitalis, (p. 555.) from whom I extract the following passage, in illustration of what Evreux was supposed to owe to its first bishop.--"Grassante secundâ persecutione, quæ sub Domitiano in Christianos furuit, Dionysius Parisiensis Episcopus Taurinum filiolum suum jam quadragenarium, Præsulem ordinavit; et (vaticinatis pluribus quæ passurus erat) Ebroicensibus in nomine Domini direxit. Viro Dei ad portas civitatis appropinquanti, dæmon in tribus figmentis se opposuit: scilicet in specie ursi, et leonis, et bubali terrere athletam Christi voluit. Sed ille fortiter, ut inexpugnabilis murus, in fide perstitit, et coeptum iter peregit, hospitiumque in domo Lucii suscepit. Tertia die, dum Taurinus ibidem populo prædicaret, et dulcedo fidei novis auditoribus multùm placeret, dolens diabolus Eufrasiam Lucii filiam vexare coepit, et in ignem jecit. Quæ statim mortua est; sed paulò pòst, orante Taurino ac jubente ut resurgeret, in nomine Domini resuscitata est. Nullum in ea adustionis signum apparuit. Omnes igitur hoc miraculum videntes subitò territi sunt, et obstupescentes in Dominum Jesum Christum crediderunt. In illa die c. homines baptizati sunt. Octo cæci illuminati, et quatuor multi sanati, aliique plures ex diversis infirmitatibus in nomine Domini sunt curati."