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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 Confrerie 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 Confrerie had developed by 1543 into a strong rival of that more famous
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