Some curious details of life in Paris under the English have come down to us. By a royal pardon granted to Guiot d’Eguiller, we learn that he and four other servants of the Duke of Bedford, and of our “late very dear and very beloved aunt the Duchess of Bedford whom God pardon,” were drinking one night at ten o’clock in a tavern where hangs the sign of L’Homme Armé.[94] Hot words arose between them and some other tipplers, to wit, Friars Robert, Peter and William of the Blancs Manteaux, who were disguised as laymen and wearing swords. Friar Robert lost his temper and struck at the servants with his naked sword. The friar, owing to the strength of the wine or to inexperience in the use of secular weapons, cut off the leg of a dog instead of hitting his man; the friars then ran away, pursued by three of the servants—Robin the Englishman, Guiot d’Eguiller and one Guillaume. The fugitive friars took refuge in a deserted house in the Rue du Paradis (now des Francs Bourgeois), and threw stones at their pursuers. There was a fight, during which Guillaume lost his stick and snatching Guiot’s sword struck at Friar Robert through the door of the house. He only gave one “cop,” but it was enough, and there was an end of Friar Robert.
A certain Gilles, a povre homme laboureur, went to amuse himself at a game of tennis in the hostelry kept by Guillaume Sorel, near the Porte St. Honoré, and fell a-wrangling with Sorel’s wife concerning some lost tennis balls. Madame Sorel clutched him by the hair and tore out some handfuls. Gilles seized her by the hood, disarranged her coif, so that it fell about her shoulders, “and in his anger cursed God our Creator.” This came to the bishop’s ears, and Gilles was cast for blasphemy into the bishop’s oven, as the episcopal prison was called, where he lay in great misery. He was examined and released on promising to offer a wax candle of two pounds’ weight before the image of our Lady of Paris at the entrance of the choir of Notre Dame.
Many of the religious foundations had suffered by the wars, for in 1426 the glovers of Paris were authorised to re-establish the guild of the blessed St. Anne, founded by some good people, smiths and ironmongers, which during the wars and mutations of the last twenty years had come to an end. In 1427, “our well-beloved, the money-changers of the Grand Pont in our good town of Paris were permitted to found a guild in the church of St. Bartholomew in honour of our Creator and His very glorious Mother and St. Matthew their patron.” In 1430 was granted the humble supplication of the shoemakers, who desired to found a confraternity to celebrate mass in the chapel at Notre Dame, dedicated to “the blessed and glorious martyrs, Monseigneur Crispin the Great, and Monseigneur Crispin the Less, who in this life were shoemakers.”
The fifteen years of English rule at Paris came to a close in 1446. In 1443 a goldsmith was at déjeuner with a baker and a shoemaker, and they fell a-talking of the state of trade, of the wars and of the poverty of the people of Paris. The goldsmith[95] grumbled loudly and said that his craft was the poorest of all; people must have shoes and bread, but none could afford to employ a goldsmith. Then, thinking no evil, he said that good times would never return in Paris until there were a French king, the university full again, and the Parlement obeyed as in former times. Whereupon Jean Trolet, the shoemaker, added that things could not last in their present state, and that if there were only five hundred men who would agree to begin a revolution, they would soon find thousands leagued with them. The general unrest which this incident illustrates soon burst forth in plot after plot, and on 13th April, 1446, the Porte St. Jacques was opened by some citizens to the Duke of Richement, Constable of France, who, with 2000 knights and squires, entered the city and, to the cry of Ville gagnée! the fleur-de-lys waved again from the ramparts of Paris. The English garrison under Lord Willoughby fortified themselves in the Bastille of St. Antoine but capitulated after two days. Bag and baggage, out they marched, circled the walls as far as the Louvre, and embarked for Rouen amid the execrations of the people. Never again did an English army enter Paris until the allies marched in after Waterloo in 1815.