Brittany Its Byways | Page 6

was one of the most formidable in Normandy. Banished from France, he went over to England and persuaded Edward III. to make a descent upon Normandy instead of Gascony, assuring him he would find rich towns and fair castles without any means of defence, and that his people would gain wealth enough to suffice them for twenty years to come. The King landed at La Hogue, or Saint Vaast-la-Hogue, as it is now called, where he knighted the Prince of Wales and made Warwick and Harcourt marshals of his army. They advanced in three divisions--the King and the Prince in the centre, the two marshals on the right and left--ravaging all before them, and not stopping in their victorious course till the great victory at Crecy. Harcourt subsequently met a traitor's fate. A force was sent against him, his army was routed, and, preferring death to being taken, he fought most valiantly until he was struck to the ground by French lances, when some men-at-arms dispatched him with their swords. He had sold the reversion of his castle to King Edward III., to whom it was confirmed by the treaty of Bretigny. Edward bestowed the barony upon that pride of English chivalry, Sir John Chandos, in recompense for his great services in the wars. The square donjon and inner gate were built by Chandos. The castle is well preserved, and is now used as a hospice for orphans and aged women. The rooms are kept beautifully clean, and on a tablet in one of the corridors is written up "Dortoirs restaurés par la munificence de M. le Comte Georges d'Harcourt en mémoire de ses illustres ayeux, anciens Seigneurs de ce chateau, en 1838."
The Benedictine convent also belonged to the Harcourts until the revolt of Geoffrey. It is now the property of the Soeurs de la Miséricorde, who have rebuilt the fine Abbey church according to its former model. Originally built in the eleventh century, it was partly burnt in the fourteenth, and reconstructed in the fifteenth. The columns and arches of the nave are of the first period; the form of the church is a Latin cross, having an apse ornamented with a double row of lancet windows, richly sculptured. The sculptures are all executed by an untaught workman of the place, who died before he had completed the pulpit. To collect the funds necessary for the undertaking, the foundress travelled throughout Europe. Her tomb is in the church. "Julie Fran?oise Catherine Postel, née à Barfleur, 1756. Soeur Marie Madelaine, Fondatrice et première Superieure Générale de l'Institut des Ecoles Chrétiennes de la Miséricorde, morte en odeur de Sainteté 16 Juillet 1846, à l'Abbaye de St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte." The badge of the sisterhood is a cross inscribed with their motto "L'obéissance jusqu'à la mort." Some of the party made an attempt at fishing in the little river Douve, but without success, though rewarded for their walk by a pretty view of the apse of the Abbey church, with its delicately-sculptured lancet windows, from the opposite side of the river.
[Illustration: 5. L'OBéISSANCE JUSQU'à LA MORT.]
We hired a private carriage (voiture à volonté) to Périers. After passing over a hilly road we crossed a marsh which extends from Carentan to the sea, and reached a town called La Haye-du-Puits--a singular name derived from the custom in the middle ages of surrounding the "motte" or enclosure upon which the donjon was built, with a wooden palisade, or sometimes with a thick hedge formed of thorns and branches of trees interlaced: hence La Haye-du-Puits, La Haye-Pesnel, and others. Here is a Norman church restored: all the capitals of the columns are of the same pattern.
The Abbey church at Lessay, where next we stopped, is of the twelfth century, and considered, with Coutances and Périers, to be the finest examples of Romanesque in the Cotentin. The arches are round, and all the architecture of the church, which has been restored, is of the same period. The Abbey of Lessay had transmarine jurisdiction and the right of presentation to the Priory of Boxgrove and other endowments in the diocese of Chichester. The Abbey house, now inhabited, is a fine modernised habitation. At Lessay we saw the manner of washing linen practised in many places throughout Normandy and Brittany. Being first roughly washed in the river, the clothes are placed in layers in a large cask, with a bunghole at the bottom, alternately with wood-ashes, and on the top is laid a piece of coarse sacking. Boiling water is poured over the top, which, as it passes through the linen, absorbs the soda of the ashes, escaping at the bottom and carrying away with it all impurities. This process is repeated several times till the clothes are perfectly white.
Throughout this part of the country the mistletoe hangs as the