h century to the
aspect of the town, it is not often we shall find a locality so
persistent in its character as the Place de la Haute et Basse Vieille
Tour, when once its military strength had been changed into commercial
convenience. The older castle, originally built more to the north-west
by Rollo, between the Church of St. Pierre du Chastel and the Rue des
Charrettes, had long ago absolutely disappeared, and its place was
taken by a Franciscan convent, given to the brethren in 1248 by
Archbishop Rigaud, who had been originally a monk of the Order; and
the ruins of their building may be seen in the street which, as Rue
des Cordeliers, still preserves their name. Another change that is
still recorded in the nomenclature of the streets took place when
Louis VIII. allowed the inhabitants to build gardens and almshouses in
what had once been the moat of the old town walls. This you may trace
in the name of the Rue des Fosses Louis VIII., formerly the Rue de
l'Aumone. In the same way the Rue des Carmes preserves the fact that
the Carmelite monks brought by St. Louis from the Holy Land, migrated
to the street that bears their name in 1336, and remained there for a
very long time.

But everything did not go smoothly in the streets of Rouen while these
pacific changes were in progress. In 1213 the town was filled with the
levy of counts, barons, and knights, with all their men-at-arms, whom
Philip was collecting to attack the King of England; and in 1250 a far
more disorderly and plebeian assembly gathered under the leadership of
Andre de St. Leonard to express in the practical form of riot and
pillage their disapprobation of the ten per cent. exacted by the
Church for grinding corn in the ecclesiastical mills. Near the Pont de
Robec and the Rue du Pere Adam flour and wheat were forcibly stolen,
but Archbishop Odo Rigaud soon asserted his authority, by fining the
ringleader 100 marks of silver, equivalent to about L2000 sterling,
and the dissatisfaction ceased. In the next year a rising, that had
some slight degree of religious colour in it, gave a good deal of
trouble, not to Rouen only, but to the rest of France. Bands of
peasants, styling themselves "Pastoureaux," asserted their indignation
at the captivity of King Louis IX. by chasing the archbishop out of
his cathedral. From the fact that they had been joined, not merely by
all the lazy ruffians of the neighbourhood, but by some burgesses, and
even by certain municipal