ts
pastors from among the brethren of that convent. At a subsequent period,
the monks, after they had transferred to substitutes the performance of
their religious duties, still endeavored to preserve their supremacy;
but they were finally obliged to relinquish it; and the ministers of St.
Nicholas enjoyed the same rights as the other clergy of Caen, though the
ecclesiastical privileges of the abbot remained inviolate.

To the church of St. Nicholas was attached a guild, in the early lists
of whose members were included names of the greatest distinction in the
town and neighborhood. St. Nicholas was in remote times an object of
especial devotion; and the company incorporated under his patronage,
naturally partook of his celebrity. The Abbe De la Rue also states, that
it was from within this church, that what were termed the _Apostolic
decrees_, were delivered in the twelfth century. They derived their name
from being pronounced by commissioners delegated by the Pope, to decide
in matters touching the canon law; and the numerous appeals to the court
of Rome, at that period, rendered the necessity for such decisions of
frequent occurrence.

NOTES:

[113] _Tour in Normandy_, II. p. 176.

[114] _Antiquities of Ireland_, p. 151.

[115] _Quarterly Review for June_, 1821, p. 120.

PLATE LVII.

CHURCH OF CHEUX.

[Illustration: Plate 57. CHURCH OF CHEUX NEAR CAEN.
_From the North East._]

The earliest mention which occurs of Cheux, a small country town, about
nine miles to the west of Caen, is to be found in the charter, granted
about the year 1077, by the Conqueror, for the foundation of his abbey
of St. Stephen. The king, in this instrument, after a pious proem,
reciting that he has been led to the holy task by the expectation of
obtaining remission for his sins and a hundred-fold reward in heaven,
places, as the very first of the gifts destined for the endowment of the
rising monastery, the town of Cheux. He also expressly designates Cheux,
and the four places immediately following, as _villas juris mei_,
thereby meaning, as M. de Gerville justly remarks, to draw a distinction
between those donations which came immediately from himself, and those
which originated with any of his subjects, and stood in need of nothing
more than a ratification on his part. Another remark may, perhaps, not
impertinently be made upon this part of the charter, as curiously
illustrative of the manners of the times as to th