[5] "In manu gothica," he says, with a phrase that was to produce a very pretty quarrel later on.
[6] This jovial monarch is mentioned in a legal decree of 1392. He retires into obscurity during the English Occupation, and is restored, curiously enough, by the sombre Louis XI. in 1461, and freed from all taxes and subsidies. At the entry of Charles VIII. in 1485 (see [Chap. X.]) he makes a very appropriate appearance. In 1543 François Premier mentions a "Reine d'Yvetôt." In 1610 Martin du Bellay, Sieur de Langey and Lieutenant General of Normandy, was hailed as "Mon petit roi d'Yvetôt" by Henri Quatre at the coronation of Marie de Médicis. In 1783 the last "documentary" evidence occurs in the inscription on two boundary-stones: "Franchise de la Principauté d'Yvetôt."
[7] Evidently "feretrum," cf. "La fiertre de Saint Thomas," Froissart, xii. 9.
[8] He is carved on a façade in the Musée des Antiquités, for instance, and painted in a window of the Church of St. Godard, to take only two examples of his constant occurrence in the civil and religious life of the people.
[9] Not only did it eat men, women, and children, say the old chronicles, but "ne pardonnait même pas aux vaisseaux et navires!"
[10] He certainly pulled down the Amphitheatre, and destroyed the Temple of Venus, and the loss of both of these was likely to be well remembered for some time by the inhabitants. It is suggested that the Temple of Adonis fell at the bidding of the same bold reformer to make way for the first church of St. Paul beneath the heights of St. Catherine.
[11] Chron. de St. Denis, iii. 99.—"Franco ... regarda l'état de la cité et les murs qui étaient déchus et abattus," etc., or in Wace's verses:
"Li Archeveske Frankes à Jumièges ala
A Rou et à sa gent par latinier parla....
... Donc vint Rou à Roem, amont Saine naja,
De joste Saint Morin sa navie atacha."
[12] "As herteiches montent et al mur quernelé." (Wace, R. de R., 4057.)
[13] Students of that invaluable vision of antiquity "Les Contes Drolatiques" will remember that it was also before Duke Richard that Tryballot, the lusty old ruffian known as "Vieulx Par-chemins," was brought up for judgment, and that the statue commemorating His Grace's sympathetic verdict remained in Rouen till the modesty of the English invaders removed it.