n that at Rouen. Both
those at Caen, however, agreed in the wall above the arch rising into a
triangular gable covered with waving tracery, a very peculiar, and a
very beautiful style of decoration.

[Illustration: Plate 19. CHURCH OF ST. MICHEL DE VAUCELLES, CAEN.
_North Porch._]

Vaucelles is at this time the largest of the five parishes that compose
the suburbs of Caen. It is separated from the town by the great canal of
the Orne, the formation of which has somewhat circumscribed its limits;
for these formerly extended into the Rue St. Jean, and included the
hospital, called the Hotel Dieu, as well as that which derives its name
from the Conqueror. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the
presentation to the living of Vaucelles lay alternately between the two
royal abbeys of Caen. Queen Matilda, previously to the year 1066,
purchased a moiety of the patronage and of the tythes, together with a
mill at Montaigu, and gave them to her abbey of the Trinity; and about
eleven years afterwards, Ralph, the curate of Vaucelles, the hereditary
proprietor of the other half, ceded his share to the abbey of St.
Stephen, on condition of being himself received into that monastery. The
latter establishment, within less than one hundred and fifty years,
obtained the exclusive patronage, upon the consideration of their making
the nuns an annual payment of twenty sols, and ninety-six bushels of
barley.

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the parish of Vaucelles was in
the hands of lords of its own; among whom, the most conspicuous were the
Fitz-Herberts. An illegitimate son of Prince Henry, afterwards Henry I.
by a daughter of Robert Corbet, was the origin of this family. To his
own name, Herbert, he added that of Fitz-Henry: his sons became
Fitz-Herberts; and each of their descendants, in every successive
generation, commonly adopted the baptismal appellation of his respective
father, by way of a family name; till, towards the close of the
thirteenth century, the whole of them agreed upon Fitz-Herbert as a
patronymic. Their possessions were extensive in Caen and the
neighborhood; and the records of those early times make frequent mention
of their riches and liberality. Thus, according to the Abbe De la Rue,
from whom these historical particulars are derived, this noble family,
still represented in our own country by the Earls of Pembroke, was not
only derived from the town of Caen, but had an origin different from
wh