"killed
them with large stones." The town never opened its gates until Henry
of Navarre repudiated his religion and became the King of France.
Rouen, as well as Paris, was evidently "well worth a mass."

One of the most interesting things about this fighting is the presence
of a numerous body of Englishmen who had joined Biron and Henry of
Navarre, under the Earl of Essex. Their Queen had offered a special
prize for the first man who should make a successful shot at the
defenders of the town; but they do not seem to have distinguished
themselves particularly, and at last a hundred of them (chiefly
squires) were killed. A hardy specimen of the race, however, is
mentioned by Valdory, who evidently kept his eyes open for good work,
whether of friend or foe. This Englishman, after receiving four wounds
from a cutlass on the head, "pretended to be dead, allowed himself to
be stripped by our soldiers, and dragged naked to the ramparts." While
he lay there, desirous to make quite sure of their man, the Rouen
sentinels (who must have been mariners from Dieppe) dropped a small
cannon ball on his stomach, "but he did not seem to feel it," and
continued obstinately to remain alive. However, when the Sieur de
Canonville took him prisoner and bound up his wounds, with the object,
apparently, of getting a ransom from his friends, he seems to have
determined that no foreigner should make money out of him, and died.

[Illustration: SIR CHRISTOPHER LYTCOT, HIGH SHERIFF OF BERKSHIRE,
KNIGHTED BY HENRI IV. AT THE SIEGE OF ROUEN IN 1591. FROM THE BRASS
UPON HIS TOMB IN WEST HANNEY CHURCH, NEAR WANTAGE, BERKSHIRE]

In the Church of West Hanney, near Wantage, in Berkshire, is the tomb
of one of these Englishmen who fought for Henry of Navarre before the
walls of Rouen, and it will be an appropriate ending to this chapter
of the dead if I close it with his epitaph:--

"Beneath this stone lyeth enterred the corps of Sir
Christopher Lytcot, Knight, twice high sheriff of the county
of Berk (Husband of two wives both in the sayd countye the
former Jane Essex widdowe of Thomas Essex of Beckett House
Eq. the later Catherine Young widdowe of Willm Younge of
Bastledon Eq) Knighted in the campe before Roane the xvi of
Novemb 1591 by the hands of the French Kinge Henry the
Fourth of yt name and King of Navarre. Who after his
travailes in Germany Italy and Fraunce and the execution of
justice unto t