tory, apart from Orleans, we shall find instances at Laon,
at Vendome on the Fete of St. Lazare, at the Petit Chatelet of Paris
on Palm Sunday, and at Embrun. But in none of these cases is there
either proof or record of so continuous and persistent an exercise of
the privilege as is found at Rouen.]

In 1135 the great fete of St. Romain, the most important yet held in
Rouen, had been instituted for only about fifty years. Its pardons,
its processions, and its fair were still fresh in the popular
imagination, and would be very likely to be secured as the chief
attraction in the first great "Miracle-Play" that was given under the
patronage of the Church at Ascension-tide, for they kept alive the
memory of the patron saint of Rouen, who had delivered his city from
the Dragon of Idolatry by means of a condemned prisoner. So the idea
of the Ascension Mystery became inextricably connected with the great
saint of the town, yet the Privilege itself was not exerted on his
feast day, the 23rd of October, but on Ascension Day, when the Virgin
was also represented as crushing the serpent's head. For two days in
the great Ascension Festival the flaming monster was moved before the
cross through all the streets of Rouen. On the third day, which was
Ascension Day itself, the dragon followed, bound and vanquished,
behind it.

So it is that we find this first recorded prisoner, Chevalier Richard,
speaking of the "Privilege" as "_en l'honneur de la glorieuse Vierge
Marie et de Saint Romain_."[24] By 1210, therefore, these two holy
names had become definitely associated with the "Levee de la Fierte,"
and the _fierte_ was already raised upon the shoulders of the prisoner
to signify the new yoke of the Christian religion which he took upon
him in exchange for the sins from whose consequence he had been
mercifully delivered. Where Chevalier Richard, in 1210, raised the
jewelled shrine of the relics of St. Romain, at the chapel of the old
castle of the Dukes of Normandy, on the very same spot did Nicolas
Beherie and his wife raise it in 1790, on the last occasion when the
"Privilege" was exercised. The custom had continued through the
centuries in the place of its origin, though Norman castles had been
replaced by the prison of Philip Augustus, though the Baillage had
been built, though the Englishmen under Henry V. had taken the town,
though the Conciergerie of later reigns existed. The conservatism of
the Church had led her thus unconsci