GALLIC ANTIQUITIES.-NO. I.

THE KINGS OF YVETOT.

"In the land, which Caux' men call,

There were four abbeys royal,

Priories six conventual

Of barons six, a goodly string,

Four counts, three dukes, and last a king."

Ancient Chronicle.

"There was once a king of Yvetot."-BERANGER.

THE kingdom of Yvetot, the smallest of all small monarchies, the "kingdom infinitely little," as Voltaire designates it, has been so long and so often, even before the days of its poet Béranger, the subject of constant jest and merry mockery in France, that it is worth while to inquire into its origin and nature, and state what it is, and why it has always had one-half the talent of Falstaff, for, if not witty in itself, of which no author accuses the good town, it is at least the cause of wit in others.

Yvetot, then, which only a few years ago served as the groundwork for an imperishable, inexhaustible joke upon the persons of the King of all the Belgias and the fair Princess Louisa d'Orleans, his wife, at their marriage-Yvetot is a part of the district of Caux, a country of Normandy, and its existence, usages, and customs, were subjects of great research, discussion, and bitterness among the learned of a century ago. Erudition in those days was not remarkable for its politeness or tolerance, and nothing-no, not even the scurrilities of Milton, Talmasius, Scaliger, and Co.-could exceed the insolence vomited forth in bad French, worse Latin, and even in barbarous Celtic, among the learned French to prove or disprove the existence of the little kingdom of the district of Caux. All the historians of Normandy-and, Heaven knows, they are numerous enough-have dedicated some pages of their massy infolios to the history of Yvetot, and the Abbé Vertot has given a long dissertation upon the subject, in which he most barbarously treats one poor innocent chronicler as the vilest impostor, the most stupid ass, and the greatest liar that ever was nourished at the bosom of literature, only because the poor fellow has confounded the history of Yvetot with the legend of the country-a crime scarcely to be treated so harshly, we should think, by the imaginative author of "The Siege of Candia," who seems determined to keep the privilege of inventing history to himself. "The Mercure de France," in 1725 and 1726, did more with less brutality; it took the trouble to search into the Annals of Yvetot for its history, and gave it to the public; and we, in our turn, struck by the singularity of its existence, and believing our readers will be obliged to us for so doing, give all we have collected upon the subject, both as to the history and the legend; and, as it is the elder who has a right to precedence over her younger sister, we begin with the latter::

In the year 525 the Lord of Yvetot was a noble gentleman named Gaultier, chamberlain to Clotaire I., King of Soissons. He fell into disgrace with his royal master: nobody knew exactly why, though all have made guesses on the subject. Some say that the chamberlain had more talent and honesty than was agreeable to his fellow courtiers, whose Oct.-VOL. LIV. NO. CCXIV.

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merits were fairly eclipsed by his, and that, therefore, in default of existing crimes in Gaultier, they invented some for his exclusive service —a manœuvre which has been practised in later times, and in more civilised countries than that of Soissons. The courtiers had all the success they desired from it. The Lord of Yvetot, knowing something of the irritable temper of his gracious master, thought it best to betake himself to travel; which he did without taking time to ask leave, or making long adieux, resolving not to return till the storm should blow over. He went then "to distant lands," says the legend, and fought his way nobly to fame in combating by sea and land against the enemies of his faith, giving his good sword no time to gather rust during a constant warfare of ten long years. At the end of these ten long years he began to grow aweary of so much glory, his heart yearned towards his native land, and thinking that the anger of King Clotaire must be calmed now, if ever it should be calmed at all, he obtained from our father the Pope a goodly letter of recommendation to the King, full of praise of his gallant conduct, and beseeching his royal favour towards him. Thus munitioned, the warrior set out on his journey to France.

It was on a Good Friday that the Lord of Yvetot arrived at Soissons, where King Clotaire held his court, and he augured most favourably to himself, both from the sanctity of the day and the sanctity of the employment of the monarch, who was devoutly assisting at mass in the great church of the city. He went forward meekly, but confidently, and, with a most penitential mien, entered the holy place, went up to his royal master, and, falling humbly at his feet, gave him the sacred letter, and besought his goodness for pardon and protection upon the strength of his good conduct and gallant deeds: but King Clotaire was a man of his word, and had besides an excellent memory. He called to mind what he had sworn to do unto his run-away chamberlain, if ever he should get hold of him; and therefore, without any regard to the sanctity of the place, the solemnity of the day, or the representations of the sovereign Pontiff, he drew out his long sword, and ran the unlucky Gualtier clean through the body, even upon the very steps of the altar. Great outcry, loud clamours, and much discontent, even among the flatterers of the King, at this sacrilege, for if they feared his majesty much, they feared the church still more; and the Pope did not lessen their terrors when he threatened the King with expostulation, excommunication, expatriation, and another ation little known in those days, but with which, in more civilised times, sovereigns unfortunately have been made too intimately acquainted. But the Pope died before he had carried his menaces into effect, and then the courtiers took good care not to let the King see that they recollected such a trifle as the chamberlain's murder. But while their memories went to sleep the King's conscience awoke, and, less accommodating than his courtiers, tormented him terribly; remorse laid her griffin claws upon him, and clutched so tight, and clawed so hard, that his life became a burden to him. To get rid of this internal clamour, he resolved to confer a great and singular benefit upon the son of the unfortunate Gualtier. When he had become also King of Neustria (Normandy) he affranchised his domain from all dependence upon the crown, freed him and it from all taxes, service, obedience of all and every kind to any superior whatever, making him, in short, absolute master in his own little territory, depending upon no one. Such an affranchisement in those days was

equivalent to a kingdom, and since that time the Lords of Yvetot have always borne the title as well as exercised the authority of king.

The first person who reports this ancient and curious legend is a certain Nicholas Gilles, a chronicler of the fifteenth century. Now, without being quite so bitter as the Abbé Vertot, we must, nevertheless, remark, that, in recounting a fact so extraordinary nine hundred and fifty-six years after it happened, the good chronicler, whatever might be the force of his own conviction, could not reasonably expect to be believed upon his bare word. Again, Master Nicholas has not shown much talent in the act of legend-lying. He supposes the existence of hereditary fiefs in the sixth century, though they were not established till the ninth or tenth. He speaks of Gualtier's combats with the enemies of his religion, which is purely a reminiscence of the crusades, which did not take place till six hundred years after. Honest Gilles has thus perpetrated some very astounding anachronisms, which is unpardonably clumsy, for when an author invents history, he ought at least to make it probable: in our days these sort of inventors are not more scrupulous than Master Gilles on the score of lying, but they do it a little more dexterously.

From all which we have been able to discover we find that it was about the middle of the twelfth century, when France was already divided into innumerable sovereignties, that the lands of Yvetot were declared free of all tenure, homage, and obedience to their chiefs, the Dukes of Normandy, whose vassals, till then, they were. A Lord of Yvetot, called Walter, having rendered signal services to Henry Duke of Normandy, afterwards Henry II. King of England, was by that prince loaded with strong marks of his gratitude and magnificence, and by him the lands of Yvetot were erected, not precisely into a kingdom, but into an independent territory, free from all kinds of duty and servitude. The proprietors exercised, as far as they could, all the privileges of royalty. They had, in their small capital, a free and public market, where the Castilians, Arragonese, and Portuguese came to exchange their merchandise against that of France: besides this they struck money, if round bits of leather, with a small nail having a copper or silver head driven through the centre, may be called so. They were unquestionably sovereigns in fact, and the distance between the reality and the appearance is so trifling that vanity can soon overpass it. The chief of Yvetot then declared himself King, and, in 1268, the Archbishop of Rouen gave him that title. In 1392 a decree of the Exchequer of Normandy solemnly confirmed the title of king to the Lords of Yvetot, who bore it quietly during two centuries, to the great glory of the country of Caux. In the fifteenth century, the English having mastered the best half of France, Henry V. King of England gave the domains to a knight named John Holland; but he being a man who only cared for the positive, left crown, sceptre, and mantle royal to whoever would choose to fight for them, when he discovered that the whole revenues of the kingdom amounted but to 448 livres 12 sols 4 derniers, about 187., instead of 800 livres, 321., which he had been led to expect. This debate lasted till it was terminated by the English being driven out of France, and the royalty of Yvetot, with all its dignities and prerogatives, was bought in 1459 by the Sieur Guillaume Chenu, chamberlain to King Louis XI.

Louis XI., as everybody knows, was not very fond of seeing his nobles

wear crowns in the teeth of his, or allowing any other kingdom to spring up in that of France, at a period, too, when his utmost policy was bent to the union of all France under his own authority, and the subjugation of all the great independent states either by money or by arms. He felt, therefore, a strong inclination to trouble his brother sovereign in the exercise of his royal authority, although his majesty of Yvetot allowed his majesty of France to sleep more quietly than did his "fair cousin" Charles the Bold of Burgundy. He sent, therefore, his officers to the country of Caux to make inquiries into the rights, usages, and customs of the little royalty. Thirty-seven witnesses, all aged from 70 to 92 years, declared unanimously, in 1461, "that the lands of Yvetot were free from all servitude and obedience that the king of France had no right to demand any subsidies neither fourths nor tenths, nor force any taxes-that the merchants trading to Yvetot paid no customs, except to the Lord of Yvetot himself-that the judicial authority of Yvetot was quite independent of that of France-that King Charles V. one day hearing mass in the town of Yvetot, ordered his guards to lower their arms, saying, that there he was not the sovereign." In consequence of these, and sundry other declarations, Louis XI. confirmed the privileges of the Lords of Yvetot by letters patent in the year 1464; but as he did not choose that any other than himself should bear the kingly title, he would not consent to give more than the distinction of" prince" to Guillaume Chenu, his chamberlain aforesaid.

Francis I. and the Bearnais were not so difficult. The former, in a letter which he wrote to the Parliament of Paris respecting a process between a lady of Montour and a lady of Yvetot, decorated this latter with the title of "queen :" perhaps she was handsome; in that case, it was an affair of pure gallantry on the part of the knightly King. He thought all handsome women might be called " "without any queens political consequence, and he had already crowned more than one in his own manner. As for the Bearnais, he loved a jest, and knew how to take as well as make one. In 1589, on the eve of a decisive battle against Mayenne and the Duke of Parma, Henry established his quarters at a mill in Yvetot, and, turning round to his companions, said laughing, "If I lose the kingdom of France, I shall be sure to keep that of Yvetot at least." In 1610, at the coronation of Marie de Medicis in the Abbey of St. Denis, Henry, seeing that the grand-master of the ceremonies had not reserved a place for Martin du Bellay, Lord of Yvetot, said, "I insist that you find an honourable place for my little King of Yvetot according to the rank which he holds."

These "little kings," as Henry good humouredly called them, had afterwards to support long contestations against the parliament of Rouen, who would not permit them to be more than "princes:" after this period, whether from the fear of ridicule, or by the action of a decree of the parliament, even the princely title disappeared, and the Lords themselves finally sank in the great shipwreck of 1789. The last of this royal house married the daughter of a forgeman in the department de l'Eure. As for the capital itself, at present existing, it possesses a post office, an under préfecture, a small free-school, one street a mile and half long, ten thousand inhabitants, and an immense number of cisterns, which, as they are generally empty, does not prevent this metropolis from being almost entirely without water during nine months in the year. Vive le Roi!

THE CONVERSAZIONE,

ON THE LITERATURE OF THE MONTH.

The Doctor. "The Life of Edward Jenner, M.D."-Two very handsome volumes contain the memoirs of the celebrated discoverer of vaccination, written by his friend Dr. Burrow. The writer's personal opportunities and professional knowledge gave him the amplest qualifications for the subject, and he has accordingly produced a work which will be valuable, not merely to the physician, but to the philosopher, a noble tribute to the merits of one of the greatest benefactors that the world has ever seen.

The Rector. Jenner's life is one of the instances of a fortunate conception operating on a vigorous mind. It is also one of the examples of the seeming chances which have secured some of the noblest discoveries to the world. If Jenner had not been a country physician, or had been a physician anywhere but in the vale of Berkeley, he would never have found out vaccination; or if he had died at an age long before which three-fourths of mankind are in the grave, the world would have never possessed it, for he was seven-and-forty before he performed his first operation with the vaccine.

The Barrister. Jenner was born in the paternal vicarage of Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, in 1749. His family were wholly clerical, for both his uncles were in the church, and his grandfather was one of the prebendaries of Bristol. Why Jenner did not follow the family impulse is probably to be explained by a passion for natural history, which was so early that it almost amounted to an instinct. Before he was nine years old he had made himself a fossilist: from natural history to physiology is an easy step, and the progress finished with his becoming a pupil to the most zealous naturalist and most distinguished surgeon of his age, John Hunter.

The Rector. Hunter was in every sense a memorable man, a profound thinker, an indefatigable experimentalist, a daring and original inquirer. He had one of those vivid, original, and persevering minds, of which any man would predict that they were made to give a large impulse to the progress of human knowledge. He had a menagerie, too. But not for the equally foolish and cruel purpose of exhibiting animals to holiday crowds, without regarding the miseries of confinement to creatures whose whole existence is activity, whose life is in the open air, and who in the state of nature have the forest and the desert to range at their will. Hunter kept them for the purpose of investigating their habits, and chiefly to ascertain by their various diseases the origin and nature of disease in man. His study in this point was the comparative anatomy

of disease.

The Doctor. On Jenner's return to Berkeley to commence his profession he was offered a valuable appointment in the East Indies. This was a strong temptation to a youth of twenty, with the world before him. But home fortunately had too strong attractions, and he remained to establish a distinguished name.

The Colonel. Philosophy does not always secure its worshippers from