_La Rue de la Grosse Horloge_
Une rue délicieuse où le monde se pourmène, où tousiours il
y ha du vent, de l'umbre et du soleil, de la pluye et de
l'amour. Ha! Ha! riez doncques, allez-y doncques! c'est une
rue tousiours neufve, tousiours royale, tousiours impériale,
une rue patrioticque, une rue à deux trottoirs, une rue
ouverte des deux bouts ... brief, c'est la royne des rues,
tousiours entre la terre et le ciel, une rue à fontaine, une
rue à laquelle rien ne manque pour estre célébrée parmi les
rues.
The cluster of old buildings which are beneath the shadow of the
belfry are perhaps better known to strangers than any other piece of
architecture in the town. It is the focal point of Rouen, the centre
of its civic life, and if you are fortunate enough to live quite close
to it, as I did, you will find yourself in the best place for starting
on nearly every expedition that your fancy may dictate.[28] The Rue de
la Grosse Horloge itself is one of those memorable thoroughfares of
which nearly every old French town possesses at least one fascinating
example, the kind of street that, in his "Contes Drolatiques," Balzac
has so admirably described in making mention of the Rue Royale at
Tours. A glance at even the few streets marked upon Map B will show
its structural importance in the economy of the town. For the
Cathedral has stood in different forms upon the same spot since the
fifth century, and this street starts from immediately opposite its
western gate. In the earliest days it was stopped at the other end by
the gate through which the Roman road passed, across the Vieux Marché,
towards Caletum (Lillebonne). In later times the Porte Massacre was
built there, which takes its name, not from the wholesale murder of
the Jews in the adjoining quarter, but from the butchers who
congregated close by in the Rue Massacre, or Rue des Machecriers
(Wace's word for a butcher), which is called the Rue de la
Boucherie-de-Massacre in a title-deed of 1454.
[Footnote 28: In venturing to suggest a few such expeditions in my
appendix, I have found it convenient to assume that even if my reader
were not a guest in the Hôtel du Nord, he would invariably come to the
archway of the Grosse Horloge to meditate on the programme for the
day.]
The Place du Vieux Marché is a spot almost as historic in its way as
the Parvis of the Cathedral, so that there is interest at both ends of
the Rue de la Grosse Horloge. Its most terrible memory is the burning
of Jeanne d'Arc, which (as I shall show from Lelieur's plan in a later
chapter) took place at the angle of the modern halls, and close to the
cemetery of the vanished church of St. Sauveur, on the same spot in
the Vieux Marché used since the earliest history of Rouen as one of
the many places of public execution. The Rue de la Grosse Horloge has
also been called the Grande Rue, and several other names which need
not be recorded here; for both by geographical position and in its own
right it has always claimed a large share in the interest of the
citizens of Rouen.[29] Much of its once beautiful architecture has
vanished altogether. The church of St. Herbland, for instance, once
stood at its eastern extremity, opposite the Cathedral. But of the
Gothic work of 1483 not a stone is to be seen. The stained glass
windows were bought by a traveller in 1802, and by him taken to
England, after the Revolution had suppressed the Church.
[Footnote 29: Their affection was not always grammatical, as may be
seen from the old title "Rue du Gros Horloge" on the corner of the
street to-day.]
A somewhat better fate has awaited the exquisite example of French
Renaissance architecture which used to be at No. 129. Of this very
remarkable house, known for uncertain reasons as the Maison de Diane
de Poitiers, and certainly worthy of any court beauty of the time, the
façade has been carefully preserved in the little square behind the
Tour St. André in the Rue Jeanne d'Arc. As the upper storeys project
over the road, it must have been built before 1520, the date after
which such overhanging constructions were forbidden. Every inch of the
wooden surface is covered with delicate arabesques and figures. The
proportions of the various storeys are admirably indicated, and the
wall-openings grow smaller as they rise, until the whole is crowned
with an equilateral triangle, in which a round-headed arch on square
pilasters fills the central space. A round medallion with a bust is
placed on each side of the second storey windows, and the floors are
boldly indicated by deep lines of shadowed carving. The house, of
which nothing but this marvellous façade remains, was originally
called by the sign of the Cock, and is known to have belonged on the
30th May 1525, to Jean Le Roy, who appears in the parish lists of 1471
as a draper. His son Noël married another of the bourgeoisie, one
Marion Ribault; and from her possession until the town bought it from
the Hospital, which held it last, the line of title-deeds is unbroken;
the important point to notice being that it was built not by a noble,
but by a tradesman.[30]
[Footnote 30: There is a charming picture by Bonington, who was
particularly attracted by Rouen, of "Le Gros Horloge," showing this
house still in its old place in the famous street.]
But it is the Grosse Horloge itself that is the jewel of the street.
As you look at it from the west you can see constructions built in the
Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, in the reign of Henri Quatre, and in
the days of Louis Quinze. The Belfry Tower, or Campanile, is, as is
fitting to its ancient history, the oldest building of them all. There
was a tower here from the earliest days when Rouen had a civic history
at all, a "Ban-cloque" to call her citizens together, which is
mentioned in the city charters as a symbol of her freedom. First hung
here in 1150, the old bell first saved the town in 1174 during the
siege by Louis VII. In the next century the bell was recast with the
following inscription:--IE SUIS NOMME ROUVEL ROGIER LE FERON ME FIST
FERE JEHAN DAMIENS ME FIST. This is not without significance, for
though the King had given the ground for the new Hôtel de Ville, it
was only the Mayor, Le Feron, who in 1258 had a right to order the
communal bell which called the citizens to their orderly municipal
meetings, or summoned them to revolt against oppression. On the larger
bell, originally used as the curfew, are the words:--IE SUIS NOMME
CACHE RIBAUT MARTIN PIGACHE ME FIST FERE NICOLE FESSART ME FIST
AMENDER JEHAN DAMIENS ME FIST. Pigache was Mayor in 1254, and Fessart
in 1261.
In February 1381 Rouvel rang for the famous revolt of the "Harelle,"
and went on ringing the whole time the town was "up." So when young
Charles VI. entered angrily by a breach in the Porte Martainville, its
treasonable clamour was silenced for some time. For this most blatant
of the privileges of the commune was actually taken away altogether.
Nor when he pardoned rebellious Rouen could the King be persuaded to
give back the bell or allow the belfry he had ruined to be set up. So
the citizens humbly besought him that they might "faire une auloge et
la fere asseoir ou estoit le Beffroi de la dicte ville," and when King
and Bailli had agreed, they craftily built a tower for their "horloge"
just like the lost and beloved belfry on the old foundations, and you
may read on the bronze plate upon the southern side how this was done
when Guillaume de Bellengues was captain of the town, and Jehan la
Thuille was bailli for the King. Jehan le Bayeux took nine years to
build it as it is shown in Jacques Lelieur's manuscript of 1525.
Begun by Jourdain Delestre, the clock was finished by Jehan de
Félanis, began to go in September 1389 with two small bells to mark
the quarters, and was mounted on its proper platform in 1396. The
King's charter of 1389 had made special and approving mention of the
virtuous Cache-Ribaut, so he was set to ring the hours. But the wicked
Rouvel had been given to two of the King's household; and the town
would not rest content without him, until, after many emphatic
reminders of his royal pardon, the King was prevailed upon to give him
back again, and he rings the curfew to this day. But he was not hung
up until October 1449, when, after Talbot had left the Vieux Palais,
the Council joyfully gave orders to Laurent des Loges, "pour pendre et
asseoir certaine cloche nommée Rouve estant en la tour du beffroy";
and in the town accounts stands the cheery item of "Sept sous six
deniers pour vin donné aux ouvriers," when it was hung on the very
Saturday on which the Duke of Somerset was handing to Charles VII. the
articles of capitulation. So when a French king at last came through
the famous street again, Rouvel, who had remained in the dignified
silence of the conquered for sixty-seven years, made his joyful note
heard again above all the clamour of the citizens, and rang a welcome
to the freedom of the city, to deliverance from the English, to the
return of the King who confirmed the ancient privileges of the Charte
aux Normands, maintained the Échiquier de Normandie, and did, in fact,
everything that was expected of him except re-establish the Mayor. For
the revolt of the Harelle had entirely deposed the Mayor from office.
In 1389 his councillors were reduced to six, and it was only three
centuries later that, in 1695, the King once more appointed a real
mayor out of the usual three candidates presented by the town.
Then the bell "Cache Ribaut" came down, as was but right of him, from
his high place within the campanile, and Rouvel swung again on his
home-beam, "à la seconde croisée en ogive," and proceeded on his old
business of proclaiming elections, festivals, and fires and curfews,
and does so still. Affectionate flattery once called him a "cloche
d'argent," from his peculiar tone; but the most open-minded foreigner
can hardly, I think, now take any other interest in his voice than
that aroused by his long history, for he has grown somewhat hoarse
from ringing no less than 650 strokes at nine each evening for so many
years.
The old clock shares with that of the Palais de Justice in Paris the
honour of being the first in France. Guillaume Thibault and Guillaume
Quesnel painted with fine gold and azure the face towards the Vieux
Marché, which Olivier had made when he decorated both sides of the old
Porte Massacre, and they set upon it the figures of the lamb and of
the four evangelists. Its face was carved as it is now in the days of
François Premier, and on its one hand is still seen the lamb of Rouen
pointing to the hours. You must by no means omit to mount the tower
and see the guardian wind it up, for the swing of its pendulum and the
simplicity of its internal arrangements will be of the greatest
interest. The astronomical part, showing the phases of the moon, is
quite modern, and is set in a separate place just behind the
clock-face. As you turn into the belfry out of the arch or arcade you
are actually walking on the old ramparts of the city; and on the wall
you may read the number of strokes rung to mark disaster in each
portion of the town, two for St. Sever, six for St. Gervais, one for
Mont Riboudet, and so forth. From the topmost gallery look out at the
many towers and spires which even now rise in such profusion above
the roofs of Rouen--St. Pierre du Chastel, St. Eloi, the front of the
Palais de Justice with the Tour St. Laurent beyond, St. Ouen looking
(to my mind) far finer from that point of vantage than the Cathedral,
which almost hides the delicate beauties of St. Maclou. Just below you
is the Hôtel de Ville, and the courtyard which M. Détancourt filled
with queer mythology in various stages of undress, "pour son
agrément," says the guide.[31] To east and west runs the great arm of
the river, with that amphitheatre of hills which holds the town
pressed against the outside of the bow like an arrow-head ready to be
launched, and on the left of Mont St. Catherine you see the Darnétal
valley where every siege of Rouen had its natural beginning. If you
are fortunate enough to find one still alive who saw the seventeenth
summer of this century, Le Père Pepin will show you too the
"tinterelles" presented by the Sieur de Mon in 1713, which hang round
Cache Ribaut to strike the hours; and the sun and moon, which are set
in their old place again above the pavilion.
[Footnote 31: This quaint courtyard is disappointing after you have
read De La Quérière's warm eulogies, and I have only found two
occasions on which it became notable in the history of the town. In
1461 the Conte de Charolais lodged here with Regnault de Villeneuve,
Avocat du Roi, whose house was known then as the "Lion d'Or"; and when
the White Rose triumphed in England, Margaret of Anjou found a refuge
here by the orders of Louis XI.]
I have already mentioned the name of Jacques Lelieur. His chief fame
rests on the admirable plan he made in 1525 of the water-supply of
Rouen, and incidentally of many of her streets. In Lelieur's map,
which is a fascinating mixture of plan and elevation, the Porte
Massacre (in the Rue de la Grosse Horloge), is shown to be separated
from the Hôtel de Ville by a few shops. Two years after his drawing
was made the great gate (which had shown signs of weakness a century
before) was taken down and the present vaulted archway begun, which
was finished in 1529. Miss James has made for me a careful drawing of
the central panel of the entrados, which is now just above the street,
and shows the Good Shepherd (which was, no doubt, suggested by the
lamb in the arms of Rouen), copied from the seal of the Drapers'
Company. "Pastor bonus," says the legend, "animam suam ponit pro
ovibus suis." Within the semicircular panel on each side are more
sheep pasturing in a landscape, and on all the strapwork, or
"bandeaux," are carved delicate arabesques. The "pavilion," with its
high roof above it, holds the famous clock of Jehan de Félanis.
[Illustration: THE GOOD SHEPHERD
CENTRAL MEDALLION FROM THE VAULT OF THE GROSSE HORLOGE]
Besides the belfry and the archway of the clock, there was a public
fountain set on this same spot ever since Charles VII. turned out the
English. The oldest of these fountains in Rouen, drawn from the famous
spring of Gaalor, had been in the Priory of St. Lô. The next was that
set up by the Franciscans on the site of Rollo's castle, and for two
centuries the pipe of this "Fontaine des Cordeliers" passed close by
the belfry, before it struck the Town Council that it might be well to
provide water supply for citizens near the Vieux Marché, both in case
of fire, and for other obvious reasons. So by 1458, the Cordeliers
having been duly "approached" on the subject, the "Fontaine de
Massacre" was established at the foot of the belfry, and is drawn by
Lelieur as a Gothic pyramid with five sides, as tall as the arcade. It
showed signs of extreme dilapidation by the eighteenth century, and
the wags wrote squibs about the broken statues of the Virgin and
bishops by Pol Mansellement (or Mosselmen, see Chap. X.), in elegiacs
as imperfect as their subject. So the Duke of Montmorency-Luxemburg,
the Governor of Rouen and Normandy in 1728, magnanimously offered for
the restoration of the fountains all those three thousand livres which
the echevins had presented to him in a purse of cloth of gold. The
affair progressed thenceforward with due solemnity. M. de Boze,
"Intendant des devises et Inscriptions des edifices royaux," wrote
from Paris that the authorities of Rouen were to decorate their new
fountain with the loves of Alpheus and Arethusa, because, said he,
"the Seine (which is Alpheus) comes from Burgundy and Champagne to
your fountain in Rouen (which is Arethusa), to bear their mingled
waters to the sea, by which is typified your fidelity to the King to
whom the monument is to be dedicated." So the name of "Ludovicus XV."
duly appears with that of "Franciscus Fredericus Montmorencius"; and
mention is made of the allegory of Arethusa and Alpheus as aforesaid:
"Quorum fluctus amor dat esse perennes." The first sketch was made by
the King's painter, and being much approved of by the worthy Mayor
Coquerel, was executed in stone by Jean Pierre de France, "architect,
sculpteur et entrepreneur," for the sum of 5700 livres, as agreed upon
in August 1733. In 1794 the whole was considerably mutilated; but in
1846 M. Chéruel put all in order as you see it to this day, and
completed the strange harmonious mixture of buildings dating from the
Middle Ages to the eighteenth century.
As I have already noted, the first "Hôtel Commune de la Ville" was set
near the Porte Massacre, close by the Town Belfry, with the vanished
church of Notre Dame de la Ronde as its first municipal chapel. It
probably stood just where the Hôtel du Nord is now, when Henry
Plantagenet granted the citizens of Rouen their earliest charter of
municipal independence. The second "Town-hall" was that fief of the
Count of Leicester on the opposite side of the street, which Philip
Augustus gave to the burgesses in 1220 at an annual rental of forty
livres, and it remained in a state of primitive simplicity for more
than two centuries.[32]
[Footnote 32: Though little could be done during the English
occupation, it must have been enlarged in 1440, for we find in the
archives of that century that reference is made at various times to
(1) "la salle du conseil du manoir de la ville," (2) "galleries du
manoir," (3) "une salle de parmi où étaient les livres de ladite
ville," (4) "une cellier," (5) "une chapelle particulière," (6) "un
jardin carré," (7) "une cour carrée devant la grande salle," and (8)
"un puits."]
In 1525 Jacques Lelieur, tracing the course of the spring Gaalor shows
three large buildings on the old fief of Leicester, bigger than
anything near them, with a Rez de chaussée, two stories above, and a
third in the roof, the ground floor being arranged for open shops,
with the principal entrance at one side. Lelieur himself is shown (as
may be seen in his small view of Rouen which I have reproduced)
offering his manuscript to four municipal officers seated round their
council-table, with a clerk at a side-desk. The walls at the right and
at the back are panelled, and decorated on the left with fleurs de
lys.
The third Hôtel de Ville was built when the old shops of the Rue de la
Grosse Horloge began to tumble down. In June 1607 the first stone was
laid according to the plans of Jacques Gabriel. By 1658 Gomboust's map
of Rouen shows that the façade on the street was finished. It was in
the Italian style with "rusticated" blocks of stone, and had round
arcades on the ground floor for shops. The building originally formed
a square, and the retreating angle may still be seen northwards from
the Rue de la Grosse Horloge. In the centre of the courtyard was a
statue of Louis XIV.; a chapel stood at the north-east with a
pyramidal steeple of wood covered with lead. A fountain was placed at
the east end (no doubt supplied by the old "puits"). In 1705 the entry
upon the Grosse Horloge was opened by Jacques Monthieu, just where
the Passage de l'Hôtel de Ville is to-day. In 1796 the whole building
was sold to various proprietors for 72,000 livres.
Though it is very degraded in its present state, you can still see the
Doric and Ionic pilasters in couples, and the heavy circular tops
alternating with triangles above the windows; and though all those
parts of the decoration which jutted out have been destroyed, there is
still a massive dignity about the building that would have thoroughly
justified its better preservation. In any case the municipal
authorities might have had some memory of the traditions of the old
centre of their civic life, before they moved to the commonplace
erections on the north side of the Abbey Church of St. Ouen.
So, though little but the foundations remain of the original Hôtel de
Ville in the Rue de la Grosse Horloge, yet the stones of its successor
are still there, and the belfry that rang out its messages is much
more than a name; so I have thought it convenient to attach to them a
few memories of the people of Rouen as they lived in the days before
the great changes of the sixteenth century. In my next two chapters I
shall have to pause for a moment over the English siege, and the death
of Jeanne d'Arc, but the tenth chapter will deal with a few of the
numberless churches of the town, and the eleventh with that Palais de
Justice which is the triumphant signal that the sixteenth century had
begun. If I am to give you, then, a glimpse, however short, of the
people themselves in earlier years before they are overshadowed by the
great names of prelates and of princes, this will be my last
opportunity.
If any Norman were asked what was the most valuable of the privileges
which he possessed by right of citizenship in the earliest times, I
suppose he would answer without hesitation that it was the Charte aux
Normands, that confirmation, granted by Louis X. in 1315, of the old
"Custom of Normandy" ascribed by tradition to Rollo and traced by
record to William the Conqueror. It was also called the "clameur de
haro," and affectionate antiquarians derive the word from the "Ha
Rou!" with which a suppliant cried to the first pirate duke that
"wrong was being done." It is no mere artifice of fiction[33] that
this same consecrated phrase might have been heard among the
Englishmen of the Channel Islands early in the nineteenth century, and
even to this hour, that cry of "_Haro! Haro!_ à l'aide mon prince, on
me fait tort!" preserves the custom of Normandy, and of Rollo the
Dane, in Jersey, so that the sound of it "makes the workman drop his
tools, the woman her knitting, the militiaman his musket, the
fisherman his net, the schoolmaster his birch, and the ecrivain his
babble, to await the judgment of the Royal Court."
[Footnote 33: See Mr Gilbert Parker's novel, "The Battle of the
Strong," in which Jersey is carefully described, on p. 189, "A Norman
dead a thousand years cries Haro! Haro! if you tread upon his grave,"
and p. 360.]
It was soon after this confirmation of their ancient rights of
justice, that the citizens lost for a time the privileges of their
mayoralty owing to a financial dispute in 1320, which necessitated the
intervention of the King. The second epoch in the history of the
commune began, and penalties were adjudged for all cases of
misdemeanour or of shirking office. The equal, in Court-precedence, to
a Count, the Mayor of Rouen was not merely the head of the Town
Council, but sovereign-judge in matters of goods or of inheritance,
with his own court and guards and prisons. On Christmas Day, to the
sound of "Rouvel's" welcome, he marched in state to the Hôtel de
Ville, surrounded by his peers and counsellors and sergeants, all in
livery with wands of office. But the Mayor was not allowed to collect
his rates from the citizens unfairly, and the dispute which followed
Thomas du Bosc's attempt to levy the Gabelle, or tax upon salt, led
once more to Royal intervention--the King "put the communes under his
hand" as the phrase went, until the quarrel had been settled. The
importance of the salt trade in Rouen has been already noticed, and
the little salt-porter carved upon the Church of St. Vincent, and now
looking out from the south-east angle over the Rue Jeanne d'Arc, is a
sign that the same trade lasted for some centuries later in the
development of Rouen's commerce.
[Illustration: THE SALT PORTER, FROM ÉGLISE ST. VINCENT IN THE RUE
JEANNE D'ARC]
It was not merely in peaceful ways that the expansion of the civic
power may be traced at this time. For the long-drawn misery of the
Hundred Years' War began in 1337, and nine years afterwards the King
had to hurry to Rouen to oppose the advance of Edward III., who was
already at Caen and threatened the capital of Normandy. All the woods
of Bihorel, says the chronicler sadly, had to be cut down to make
"hedges and palisades" around the menaced city. After the defeat of
Cressy, the men of Rouen had a still sharper taste of the realities of
war, for the militia of the town, who had been hurried forward to
reinforce the broken army of the King, while their comrades at home
were strengthening the defences of Rouen, came up with an English
regiment near Abbeville, and contributed a heavy share to that loss
of "six thousand men of the communes" which Froissart chronicles.
That the town stood in grave need of all these warlike preparations,
as well against internal disorders as against enemies from without,
may be imagined from the disquieting scenes of 1356, when King John
came to the castle with a hundred men-at-arms, and arrested with his
own hands Charles le Mauvais, King of Navarre, and four of his suite
who were falsely accused of treason. The Count of Harcourt, the Sire
de Graville, Maubué de Mainnemare, and Colinet Doublet, were all
beheaded on the Champ du Pardon that night in April, while the King
looked on. The resistance of the citizens to this high-handed act of
injustice was only quelled by the spreading of the news of the King's
presence. But Philip, the brother of the King of Navarre (who had been
sent to prison near Cambrai), took instant vengeance by ravaging the
suburbs of Rouen, and calling in the Duke of Lancaster's English
troops. It was in resisting this allied attack that the French King
was beaten and taken prisoner at Poitiers. As soon as Charles le
Mauvais got his freedom, two years later, he returned to rehabilitate
the memory of his friends in Rouen. The body of the Count of Harcourt
had been secretly removed from the public gibbet by his family. The
three other corpses were taken down and borne to the Cathedral with
great ceremony, where their innocence of treason was solemnly
proclaimed. Excited by this open defiance of authority, the populace
of the town rose against the Dauphin's men, seized the castle, and
destroyed the Priory of St. Gervais with which they had a private
quarrel of their own on the burning question of taxes. The commune
only secured amnesty for its offences, and reconciliation with the
Regent, by paying 3000 florins as a fine.
No doubt the revolt had had some obscure connection with the horrible
excesses of the Jacquerie which at the same moment had been desolating
Paris. The disorderly bands of ruffians who had been discharged from
the French army were, at any rate, a direct source of annoyance to
Rouen later on, as indeed they were to almost every town in France in
that unhappy time, and Bertrand du Guesclin himself had to come to
Rouen in 1364 to organise the army that finally crushed these
licentious freebooters, and their ally, the King of Navarre, at
Cocherel.
Ever since the middle of the thirteenth century, frequent references
occur in the records of the town to the various trades that, in spite
of every drawback, continued slowly to progress towards riches and
consolidation. Though the early commerce with England now died down,
home industries flourished, and of them all, the making of woollen
draperies soon became the pre-eminent commerce of the town, which in
1362 signalised the fact by placing the lamb or sheep upon its civic
seal, which henceforth appears upon the arms of the town, and is also
placed so prominently on the archway of the Grosse Horloge. Rabelais
will tell you of the prosperous merchants who bought flocks of sheep
from farmers like Dindenault, to make the "bons fins draps de Rouen,"
for Pantagruel and Panurge journeyed with Epistemon, Eusthenes, and
Carpalim to Rouen from Paris, on their way to take ship at Honnefleur,
and they will explain to you (for I cannot) why the towns that grow so
thickly round the capital become more sparsely scattered towards the
sea, and in their excellent company you may appreciate the gallantry
of Eusthenes towards the Norman ladies, and even savour faintly, as
from afar, the bouquet of that Vin blanc d'Anjou which Pantagruel
bought in some old hostelry beside the Eau de Robec. "Mouton de
Rouen," says the old proverb, "qui a toujours la patte levée," and
her sons were ever ready from the earliest years to go their ways,
"gaaignant," through all the trade-routes of Europe, where French and
Spanish wines were to be bought and sold. And beyond them too; for in
1364 they had joined the mariners of Dieppe in an expedition to the
far Canaries, and even helped towards a little settlement upon the
coast of Africa, from which the good ship "Notre Dame de Bon Voyage"
brought home a cargo of pepper, ivory, and gold-dust that caused much
speculation on the quays of Rouen. In 1380 a few actual forts were set
upon the Guinea Coast, under the command of that brave Norman admiral,
Jean de Béthencourt, the chamberlain of Charles VI., who styled
himself the King of the Canaries (most fascinating of titles!) before
he died in 1425.
But even commercial enterprise could not save the city from the
ravages of the Black Death. In 1379 it swept over the town, and
carried off an enormous number of the bread-winners, for the extent of
Rouen had now almost widened to the lines of the modern boulevards,
and its population had steadily increased from the 50,000 of a century
before. The plague had left a famine in its tracks, and as a "rich
city," Rouen had been severely taxed for the necessities of war, so
that when the regents of the young King ground down the citizens with
more oppression and ill-considered taxes, there is small wonder that
their patience came suddenly to an end, and they burst into open
revolt in February 1381. These exactions came upon the citizens with a
double sting. For not only were they exhausted by previous misery, but
the good King Charles had upon his death-bed remitted these excessive
imports, and left his heart to the Cathedral in token of his eternal
goodwill to the town of Rouen, where he had so often sojourned. So the
explosion of popular indignation was instantaneous and terrible.
While "Rouvel" clanged wildly from the belfry of the town, the
citizens attacked the tax-gatherers, upset their offices, tore in
pieces their tax-rolls, and then closed the city-gates and put up the
chains across the end of every street.
[Illustration: LA GROSSE HORLOGE AND THE TOWN BELFRY]
In a tumultuous and cheering crowd, the citizens poured towards the
centre of their civic life, in the Rue de la Grosse Horloge; Robert
Deschamps, the Mayor, was put to instant flight for daring to give
halting counsels, and his private prisons were broken open. "No King
can make the people," cried the mob, "but we are going to make a
King," and forthwith they seized on poor honest Jehan le Gras, a
quiet, seemly draper; they robed him in a cloak that had just served
its turn in the last Mystery Play, and they bore him in raucous
triumph to the open square before St. Ouen. "I forthwith abolish the
taxes!" stuttered the royal phantom in high dismay, while his subjects
cheered vociferously, and every market-place roared approbation. "I
deliver up the tax-gatherers to justice!" and in a trice every
tax-gatherer, and Jew, and usurer, and fiscal agent was haled towards
the bridge and there beheaded, till the Seine ran red beneath. "I
deliver up your cruel Mayors to justice!" went on the quavering
monarch, and forthwith five miserable men who had once been mayors of
Rouen, fled from the Rue du Grand Pont, from the Rue Damiette, and
from the Rue aux Gantiers, and took shelter in the nearest cemeteries,
while their burning houses lighted up the town. "I deliver up the
proud monks of St. Ouen to justice!" continued poor Jehan le Gras,
seeing that the mob had already begun to batter in the monastery
gates,[34] and in a moment more the archives and the ancient charters
of the privileges of St. Ouen were in tatters on the ground, or
burning among the desecrated walls they had protected for so many
centuries. In his death-agony the trembling abbot signed the
renunciation of his powers, while the crowd screamed at him till he
was borne back to die.
[Footnote 34: It had always been a bitter grievance that St. Ouen held
a monopoly of the public mills for their bakers, and the grotesque
procession of the "oison bridé," in which two monks carried a goose by
a rope every year to the Town Mill in the Rue Coquerel, had not
sufficed to win their pardon from the lower classes.]
And now the mob was parted here and there by a procession of strong
men who bore something with great pride and mystery, and held it,
enveloped from all harm, above their heads. A whisper went round that
grew at last into a shout of welcome and drowned all other sounds.
"The Charter of the Normans! Hats off to the Charter! God bless the
good King Louis! God save the Charter!" From the inmost shrine of the
Cathedral, where it was kept beside the relics of St. Romain, the
famous charter had been brought by four burgesses, bareheaded, upon a
stand with golden feet. For seven and sixty years it had remained in
holy keeping, with the great green seal of Louis X. hanging from its
yellow parchment, and now the dean followed it into the streets with
all his trembling canons behind him. There was business to be done
with them too, and they knew it only too well. "The Chapter will
forthwith renounce," says Jehan le Gras, "that rent of 300 livres on
the market-halls of Rouen; you will sign the deed or take the
consequences." So they signed, and the crowd passed on breathlessly to
the next entertainment; for on a scaffold hastily erected, there stood
the King's Bailli, Thomas Poignant, reading (much against his will)
the provisions of the sacred charter, while the crowd waited with
pickaxes and hammers ready to rush and pull down his house at the
least sign of hesitation.
So in a silence that was filled with possibilities, and broken only by
the sound of the indefatigable "Rouvel," who continued tolling
feverishly night and day, the sentences of the charter of Normandy
echoed over the square before St. Ouen, and when it was ended all the
company swore upon the sacred cross to keep it faithfully, the royal
draper first, then what few remnants of civic magistracy were present,
then the canons and the whole clergy of the town, then the men of law,
and lastly every citizen in sight. Before night ended all the bloody
doings of the day, the gibbet of St. Ouen (called the "fourches
Patibulaires") had been torn down and burnt at Bihorel, and a solemn
oath of amnesty for all acts of violence was exacted from every one
who had suffered from the outrages of the mob, and at last poor Jehan
le Gras was allowed to go home to his shop, without the faintest
notion of what all the uproar had been about, and very thankful to
give up his royalty and be an ordinary draper as before.
Unfortunately the crowd, drunk with success, did not cease their riot
with the deposition of their King. The next morning they attacked the
castle Philip Augustus had set up in the Place Bouvreuil. But the
garrison repulsed them; Jean de Vienne, High Admiral of France,
brought troops into the town; the King's Commissioners were sent down
in haste with reinforcements, and heads began to fall with startling
rapidity on the scaffold in the Vieux Marché, for the town prisons
were choked with the rebels who had been arrested. To all demands for
pardon, the quieter sort of the inhabitants were ruthlessly told, "Go
to your own King, Jehan le Gras, and let him save you." But the worthy
draper had taken care to fly from Rouen as soon as he could get out of
his house, for he found the pains of royalty far outweighed its
privileges. At last when Easter Eve dawned on a most unhappy town,
news came that the young King with his uncles the Regents was waiting
at Pont de l'Arche and would only enter armed and by a breach, into
the town which had rebelled against him.
So they battered down the walls by the Porte Martainville, and the
wives and mothers and sisters of the men condemned to death in prison
helped the work, weeping at their task; and as they wrought, it was
sure some woman's heart that had the sweet imagination to deck the
town with joyous emblems, that so, by the mercy of God this young
monarch of only thirteen years might perchance be moved to compassion,
and bethink him of their former loyalty. So when the King came in, his
eyes lighted only upon banners, and tapestries, and evergreens; and
flowers fell upon him from the windows, and the leaves of the forest
strewed the roads beneath him, and from every corner came the cry of
"Noël, Noël, long live the King!" The welcome had at first been the
desperate cry of people in sore straits; but at the sight of the boy
himself, it turned into a genuine shout of admiration, for, says the
chronicle, "he was of sovereign beauty both in face and body, and full
of loving-kindness, and sweet charity, insomuch that all men who saw
him were in great joy and love of him."
But the Duke of Anjou would not allow the young King's feelings to be
moved; and it was the Duke who as they passed the belfry bade "Rouvel"
to be taken down, because he had rung out the signal for revolt. Yet
the cries of "Noël, Noël!" continued every step of the progress
through the town, until they gave way to a silence that had an even
greater effect upon the impressionable boy. For he was welcomed at the
great western gate of the Cathedral by the Archbishop Guillaume de
Lestrange, and by him was led before the sepulchre in which the heart
of Charles V. lay buried, bearing testimony for ever to his love for
Rouen. Then the King remembered how his father, each holy week, had
signed many pardons, in memory of the God who had pardoned in those
days the sins of the whole world. So he spoke the words of deliverance
to Lestrange beside him, while the population crowded, still
terror-stricken and uncertain of their fate, into the Cathedral, and
filled its aisles with anxious faces, and climbed upon the pillars to
try and get some view of the little King near the altar, upon whose
will so many lives depended. Then at last appeared the Archbishop,
standing high where all might see him, and as he read the words of
pardon which had just received the royal signature, you may imagine
how the roof rang with a greater "Noël," a louder "Vive le Roi" than
ever had sounded in the Cathedral before.
From every prison and jail in the city the prisoners were hurried to
the Mother-church; with their fetters still upon them they fell on
their knees and thanked God and the King for their deliverance, while
their families hung round their necks and sobbed for joy to see them
again alive. It was that moment on the eve of the great festival when
all the bells of Rouen began to herald the coming of Easter. The great
paschal candle had been lit in the Cathedral, and as the Archbishop
turned from the joyful throng before him to the King still standing by
the altar-steps, he welcomed the beginning of a reign that was blessed
by the giving of such happiness. And as the people crowded noisily out
into the Parvis, and each wife took her husband home again, few
thought of the misery, and the madness worse than death, that was
coming upon the young King who had set the prisoners free.
There is one more tale, a very different one, that I must tell of this
same life of the people round the belfry of the Grosse Horloge, if
only to give you the contrast of the dealings of Louis XI. with the
good citizens of Rouen, and to emphasise the moral of their sturdy
independence. For though the commune was practically suppressed, in
spite of the King's pardon, and though the results of this famous
"Revoke de la Harelle" were felt until the society in which it had
occurred had almost ceased to be, yet the character of the burgesses
remained the same under whatever laws they lived, and their freedom of
opinion continued under every rule. So that when every door in the Rue
de la Grosse Horloge flew open on a morning in 1490, when every shop
was filled with gossips eager for the news, and even "Rouvel" himself
was tingling faintly with suppressed excitement, you might be sure
that another royal attempt was being made upon the liberty of these
touchy subjects. And indeed a most astonishing thing had happened. For
a horseman of the King had suddenly spurred hot-foot through the
town, and alighted at the shop of Maître Jehan le Tellier, with the
stupefying request for the hand of his only daughter Alice in
marriage, by virtue of the King's command signed and sealed in his
pocket. The belfry-fountain was humming like a swarm of bees as all
the chambermaids and goodwives in the street rushed up to fill their
pitchers at the very moment when Le Tellier's housemaid happened to be
filling hers.
But the loudest in outcry of them all was a young merchant whose shop
happened to be opposite, and whose complaints against these outrages
on civic independence and unwarrantable extensions of the royal
prerogative would have warmed the heart of the most crabbed
constitutional lawyer. His appeals to the sacred charter of Normandy
were far louder than the rest, his invocations of the sanctity of the
paternal tie far shriller. "What right," he cried, "had this Louis XI.
to reward the ruffians of his Court with pretty girls and dowries when
his royal purse was empty? What had made him choose Rouen, of all
towns, for so unjustifiable a caprice?" As a matter of fact, it was
about the worst choice he could have made, and Madame Estiennotte
about the most unlikely mother he could have picked out for the
prosperity of his experiment. She began by putting off the horseman
until her husband should come back from market, and the moment his
back was turned, she flew down the street to the Hôtel de Ville, with
half her neighbours at her heels, and laid the King's letter before
the Town Councillors. Many of them were at once appalled by the royal
seals and sign-manual. But fortunately, one, Roger Gouël, spoke up for
the ancient privileges of the charter, loudly proclaimed that the
business was not one of the public weal, but of private concern to
Dame Estiennotte alone, and avowed himself her champion. It was
perhaps lucky for Councillor Gouël that Tristan l'Hermite was out of
the way, but the citizens were soon ready with their plan.
Désile was bidden to Le Tellier's house, and met there, somewhat to
his embarrassment, the entire regiment of the worthy merchant's
relatives, including the girl's great uncle, Abbé Viote, one of the
Cathedral dignitaries, who eyed him with a sanctimonious calm that
gave him his first tremor of uncertainty. Demoiselle Alice was
formally summoned into the family gathering, and announced her
intention of remaining single with all the innocent and unaffected
purity of a novice at a convent. After which, Madame presented the
disappointed suitor with a letter for the King, wherein was duly set
forth how that "she had received the royal letter asking for the hand
of her daughter in marriage for the King's squire; that as for herself
and her family, both themselves and their goods were at the service of
His Majesty; that unfortunately her husband had not yet returned from
market, and therefore other answer was as yet impossible save that her
daughter in presence of the family had declared her unwillingness to
marry; that she prayed God to bless His Majesty with long and happy
life, and was his humble and obedient servant, Estiennotte, wife of
Jehan le Tellier."
The wrath of King Louis, the sarcasms of Tristan l'Hermite, the
laughter of Olivier le Daim; these things you must imagine for
yourself, when that letter was read before His Majesty. But the fact
remains that other and more pressing business called Désile away to
foreign wars, and Demoiselle Alice consoled herself for her royally
appointed suitor by giving distinct encouragement to the merchant
opposite who had laid such stress upon the inviolable privileges of
the "Charte aux Normands." The story went the round of Rouen, from the
Rue du Hallage to the Hôtellerie des Bons Enfants and back again, and
you can almost hear its echoes still in that old Rouen
"des vieux pignons aigus
comme des épines dorsales
Bombant les angles contigues
Sur les solives tranversales.--
Les logis causent de tout près,
Et l'ombre leur est coutumière,
On jurerait qu'ils font exprès
De manquer d'air et lumière."
[Illustration: HÔTEL DES BONS ENFANTS]
And you will pardon me that for a moment I have listened to that
muttered gossip, to the scandal that one old roof-tree whispered to
another whilst it leant across the narrow street, as some old woman
mumbles secrets to her neighbour with bleared eyes winking beneath her
shaggy brows. There was far more talking in the streets then than
there is now, especially in such crowded little passage-ways as this
old Rue du Hallage, a corruption from the Maison du Haulage where
taxes on the corporations and on goods sold in the market-halls were
levied. For in the fourteenth century for the 228,000 inhabitants of
Paris there were only twenty-four "hotels" and eighty-six "taverns,"
and the similar disproportion in Rouen was only made up for, in the
case of the "genuine traveller," by the unstinted hospitality of such
monasteries and hospitals as those at St. Catherine, St. Vivien, or
St. Martin.
But the taverns or wine-shops did a roaring trade. On their benches
the burgesses sat every afternoon discussing business matters with
their lawyers over the light "vin du pays," or bought a few bottles of
the "vin de choix," which was the recognised offering to preachers,
judges, councillors, and kings alike.[35] It was, in fact, no bad
thing to be the advocate in a case when a rich monastery was
concerned, for the Abbey of St. Gervais records about this time that
it gave its judges and lawyers in one very critical lawsuit, a dinner
at their favourite hotel, comprising fish and pears and meat and
hypocras (no less!) and ginger and sugar and a hundred oysters. Not in
that order let us hope, though the bowels of men of law are
traditionally tough, and the hospitality of the intention is
undoubted.
[Footnote 35: The Town Accounts are filled with such cheerful business
entries as the following: "Avec Mons. Jehan Delammarre qui fu clerc de
la ville, à l'Escu de France auprès la Madeleine le darrenier jour de
septembre, 28."
"Pour boire au matin avec les advocas chiez Jehan le Bucher, 4s. 6d."
"Pour boire avec le lieutenant du Maire," and so forth. The fifteen
taverns mentioned in the accounts of the jovial town clerk from 1377
to 1381 are all to be found going very strong in the sixteenth
century. M. de Beaurepaire has preserved their fascinating
names:--L'Asne Roye, Les Petits souliers, Le Fleur de Lys près St.
Maclou, Le Cygne devant St. Martin, Le Singe près de la Madeleine, and
many more.]
Till the end of the fifteenth century mine host was called the
"Seigneur" of his sign, as the "Seigneur de l'Ours, Seigneur de la
Fleur de Lys;" and though by the close of the sixteenth century we
still find a "Dame de la Croix Rouge" for the hostess, her husband had
become (I quote from the accounts in the Archevêché) "maître du Pilier
vert," or "maître de l'Écrevisse." But even earlier than the
fifteenth century it was already possible to get good lodging for the
night at an hotel in Rouen, for a contract of 1395 has been preserved,
made between Guillaume Blanc-baston and Guillaume Marc to furnish
forth a hostelry, much as we may imagine the Hôtel des Bons Enfants
was furnished in its youth. "Four casks of good wine at ten livres,"
says this document; "twelve good beds with twenty-four pairs of
sheets; eight cups and a goblet with a silver foot; a dozen 'hanaps'
of pewter," with pots and pans and pewter dishes innumerable.[36]
[Footnote 36: No. 41 Rue des Bons Enfants is a capital example of the
Fifteenth Century Timbered inn. To the right of the inner yard a
gallery juts out on crooked pillars, the "avant-soliers" so common in
mediæval streets, and shown in Lelieur's drawings. Queer gables rise
into the air at odd corners, and if you are sufficiently hardened to
mediæval atmospheres you may discover other stables than the big shed
at the entrance, and you will understand the reason for the Notice "On
ne répond pas des accidents qui peuvent arriver aux chevaux." Through
a dark narrow slit the phantom of a cobwebbed stable-boy will lead you
into the blackened aged stables, and the spire of the abandoned church
of St. Croix des Pelletiers rises above them. Lunch here upon
omelettes and sound wine; but sleep were possibly unwise, though "Room
Number Ten" is almost too fascinating an apartment to resist.]
[Illustration: A COBBLER OF ROUEN, FROM THE STALLS OF THE CATHEDRAL]
In such an old courtyard as this of the "Bons Enfants," with its
overhanging balcony, and queerly managed stables, or in other old inns
like No. 19 Rue des Matelas, or No. 4 Rue Étoupée with its charming
"signboard," men sat and talked of their various trades, the cobbler,
for instance, who is carved on the Cathedral stalls, with the
clog-maker, and the wool-comber, and the carpenter, all met and
gossiped of their latest piece of profitable business, while the
lawyers discussed the never-ending question of the Privilège de St.
Romain with some learned clerk over their "vin blanc d'Anjou." By the
fourteenth century the list of the prisoners released by the Cathedral
Chapter begins to be very full and detailed, and we can quite imagine
what was talked about in every tavern of the town as Ascension-tide
drew near.
In 1360, for example, the King's Mint was already established in the
Rue St. Eloi, and you may still see it at No. 30 in that street as you
go up on the right hand from the river to the Place St. Eloi. The
"Hôtel des Monnaies" has been all whitewashed over, but there is a
strong and ancient look about the windows on the street façade that
warns you to go through the little passage-way, to find the soldiers
of the Douane lounging about the courtyard inside. On the back of the
houses that look out upon the street you will see the arms and cipher
of François Premier, which show that in his days the Mint still
remained in a house that was far older. And in 1360 the "Officer of
the Mint of the parish of St. Eloi," who quarrelled about the price of
his chicken in the Parvis, "voulait avoir de la poulaille à son pris."
He must have done his bargaining in very strong language, for one of
the three brothers Sautel who kept the shop, smote him that he died,
and it was to these brothers that the privilege of raising the Fierte
St. Romain with pardon for this crime, was in that year granted.
Only three years afterwards, Blanche, Dowager-Queen of France, had
laid her hand by way of justice upon Jehan le Bourgeois of Neufchatel
in spite of the fact that his murder had been pardoned by the canons'
Privilège de St. Romain; and from this case, and the following one in
1391, it appears that the pardon given to a prisoner involved that
(apart from "civil" restitutions) he was released from any "criminal"
fine that might have been laid on him, and was of right to be restored
to all offices and goods held by him previous to his arrest. More than
this, the Bailli of Rouen was not allowed to condemn any prisoner at
all during the month that intervened between the "insinuation of the
privilège" and the actual ceremony of the pardon; the "insinuation"
being the technical word for the annual formality by which the legal
authorities were informed that the Chapter would inquire into the
various prisons of the town, and proceed to make their choice before
Ascension. In one case a prisoner condemned to death (Robert Auberbosc
in 1299) was only just saved (though he was not finally chosen for the
Fierte) at the last moment from the gallows, whither he had been taken
during this sacred period, contrary to the rights of the chapter; and
again in 1361 the Bailli had actually executed a man in the same
interval before the canons knew, or could prevent it; and he was then
and there solemnly excommunicated until full amendment had been made,
for that he had been so wicked as to "violer le prévilége et libertés
de l'église de Rouen, en vitupère de la dicte église et de Monsieur
St. Romain."
The first woman to whom the famous privilege was accorded was
Guillemette Gomont in 1380, of whom nothing is recorded; but in the
next year strangely enough another woman carried the Fierte, by name
Jehanne Hélart, the wife of Robert Cariel, who had slain Jehan
Vengier; and in 1388 Estiennotte de Naples, who had been brought from
Louvier to marry Guillaume Luart, of the parish of St. Vincent in
Rouen, was pardoned by the Chapter in spite of having murdered her
husband. In this example, as in many others, to our modern eyes, the
motives which persuaded the canons to pardon the criminal they chose
are scarcely intelligible, and I can only imagine that the key to the
tragedy has been lost in most of such cases. But it is the women who
are at the bottom of nearly all recorded crime in the long story of
the Fierte, and when they are themselves chosen it is often at the end
of a drama that surpasses in interest all the tales of mere masculine
malefactors in the most interesting criminal record I have ever seen.
I shall have occasion to speak of them later. For the present I can
only take note of the cases that have been most prominent before the
time of the English siege.
The ceremony of the "Levée de la Fierte" did not invariably meet with
the approval of the people, as may be seen from the last case I have
room to quote from this period. In 1394 Jehan Maignart, of the parish
of St. Maclou, murdered Rogier le Veautre, with the assistance of two
accomplices, Pierre Robert and Jehan Marie. After the procession of
the public pardon on Ascension Day was over, the members of the
Confrèrie of St. Romain were leading Maignart in triumph through the
streets of Rouen, with a wreath of roses on his head, when suddenly a
poor woman appeared at the corner of the Rue de l'École, and screamed
to the prisoner that he was a disloyal traitor; praying St. Romain
that for his next crime he would not escape the hanging that was his
due, for that now he was only screening the true criminals from
punishment.[37] The indignant Chapterhouse were only prevailed upon to
overlook the crime of insulting their released prisoner by the full
repentance of this woman. But "the Law" had heard her too, and it laid
its hand promptly on the two accomplices. The canons instantly
objected, and a valuable precedent was created by the decision of the
King, before whom the final appeal of the case was laid. By the royal
charter, signed in February 1395, the full privileges of the canons
were upheld. The procès-verbal still exists upon a roll of parchment
fairly written, nine feet in length, with the evidence of eighty-seven
witnesses. The canons laid down (1) their right to the pardon; (2) its
origin in the miracle of St. Romain, who "prinst et mist en subjection
un grant serpent ou draglon qui estoit environ Rouen"; (3) the
sacredness with which this commemoration should be preserved; (4, 5,
6, 7, 8) the various details of the formality to be observed from the
"insinuation," the suspension of all capital punishment till
Ascension, the visiting of the prisons, and the choice of the
criminal, to the public procession; (9, and most important) the
prisoner is pardoned for every crime he confesses to the canons, not
only the one for which he is then in prison, but all previous ones; he
is restored to his heritage and his good fame; and all his accomplices
in sin are to enjoy the same full pardon (with its consequences) as
himself.
[Footnote 37: Her exact words were carefully recorded by the horrified
confrèrie: "Ha! faux traître, meurdrier, tu as pris le fait sus toy,
pour délivrer autruy; tu t'en repentiras. Je pri à dieu et à
Monseigneur Saint Romain que tu faches encore le fait de quoy tu saies
trainné et pendu."]
[Illustration: THE RUE DU HALLAGE]
It had been recognised as early as 1269 that all previous crimes were
pardoned, for the act of pardon granted by the bailli to Nicole
Lecordier in that year speaks of him as "délivré franc et quite de
tous forfès ... quielz qil soient, del tens en arrière jusques au jor
dui." And by 1446 the charter of Charles VII., which is still
preserved in the archives of the Cathedral, announces in May of that
year that the prisoner who raises the Fierte "est absolz du cas pour
le quel il l'a levée et de tous crismes précédents." So that we reach
the astonishing proposition that the Chapterhouse of Rouen enjoyed a
far greater power than even the royal prerogative of mercy, which only
pardoned a specified crime; whereas the Chapterhouse by a kind of
baptism and regeneration from sin, started their prisoner afresh on a
new life without any reference to his past misdeeds. What this
involved I shall show when opportunity arises; but the release of the
accomplices as well as the prisoner was an even more extraordinary
extension of powers. It had already taken place before this test case,
in a tavern brawl in 1370, in the crime of two drapers in 1356, and in
a very important example when Guillaume Yon with another man of
Pavilly were released after the slaying of a butcher; and the Seigneur
d'Esneval gave sworn testimony that when a friend of the dead butcher
publicly called the accomplice in the crime "a murderer," that
accomplice would have been delivered up to justice if the principal
had not carried the Fierte. The retrospective action of the pardon on
the principal also extended to his accomplices, who began life afresh
just as he did. And this extension was solemnly confirmed at the
inquiry, from which I have just quoted. There is no doubt, however,
that so excessive a "prolongation" of the powers of pardon cannot have
been allowed throughout the whole history of the Fierte; for public
opinion could scarcely have permitted a gang of ruffians every year to
return to the full privileges enjoyed by their more honest comrades.
So at the end of the fifteenth, and again at the end of the sixteenth
century, we find it laid down that only those crimes _named_ by the
prisoner should be pardoned, if the Chapter thought fit, and that only
those accomplices who appeared _with him_ in the procession should
share in his pardon.
It was only in April 1407 that this long appeal was finally decided in
favour of the two accomplices of Maignart, who bore the Fierte
thirteen years before. But the Chapterhouse took good care that so
much tedious and costly legal work should not be thrown away, and the
strength of the precedents and charters they secured at this time was
never entirely lost while the "Privilege" existed in Rouen at all.
There is only one other matter much concerning the life of the people
at this period for which I have space left, and that is their Mystery
Plays. Two celebrated instances occur in these years before the
invasions of the English and the siege of Rouen. In November 1365 the
King gave two hundred crowns of gold to a troupe of "dancers and
musicians" who had played before him at the castle in the Place
Bouvreuil. In 1374 the Confrèrie de la Passion was instituted at the
Church of St. Patrice, and on Holy Thursday held a procession in which
all the instruments of the Passion of Christ were carried through the
streets by children in the garb of angels. The Mystery that followed
was given by the direct sanction of the Church in presence of the
King, and in 1476 these representations became a regular annual
performance, and the Confrèrie had developed by 1543 into a strong
rival of that more famous Confrèrie de la Conception, or Puy des
Palinods, of which I have already traced the beginning (see p. 69), in
the verses of Robert Wace.
The first of these old Mystery Plays had been merely copies of those
Fêtes de l'Église, of which I have spoken in suggesting the origin of
the ceremonial at the Levée de la Fierte St. Romain, and were in fact
"tableaux vivants" of the religious office. Then dialogues were added,
and the "Drame Liturgique" appeared within the churches themselves.
But the inevitable element of caricature and buffoonery soon
necessitated an "outside show." The traces of this transition may be
seen in the Chapterhouse Records of Rouen. In 1451, for example, the
Christmas mystery is performed "cessantibus tamen stulticiis et
insolenciis," and in 1457 "ordinaverunt quod misterium pastorum fiat
isto festo nativitatis decenter in cappis." The "jeux de Fous" had
been forbidden by the Town Council in 1445 to be held in the churches,
and so was the "Procession de l'Âne" (from which the anthem "Orientis
partibus adventavit asinus" has been so often quoted) with its
prophets and sibyls, and the poet Virgil.
But in 1374 the Confrèrie de la Passion led their procession in all
solemnity on the fête day of St. Patrice from his church to the parish
of their warden, and all the poor school children went before, and the
last twelve wardens followed after, each leading a beggar man by the
hand, whose feet they washed during the performance of their Mystery.
And this continued until 1636. The last written "Mystère du Lavement
des Pieds" that exists was by one Nicolle Mauger, who laboured under
the disadvantage of living in the same century with Corneille.
[Illustration: MAP OF ROUEN SHEWING EXTENSION EASTWARD IN FIFTEENTH
CENTURY]