or bread. Alone of the nine prisoners, Alain Blanchart was
beheaded. But thirty-three burgesses were picked out to pay a special
tax in ready money and imprisoned till it was delivered.[45] The main
sum of the ransom was disputed with the true Norman delight in legal
quibbling, and not fully paid (or at least "arranged for") till 1430.

[Footnote 44: No one has ever explained this to my satisfaction. But
visitors to Heidelberg will remember the connection of a fox's brush
with the Court Fool Perkeo, and various other legends of Renard which
give the symbol, I fear, anything but a courteous significance for a
foe beaten but not disgraced.]

[Footnote 45: The Englishmen recorded that some of their prisoners
were put in the "Ostel de la Cloche dont avoit la garde Jehan
Lemorgue." By this changed name is meant the humbled Hotel de Ville,
where prisons had been managed in the lower storeys early in the
fifteenth century.]

The imposition of this huge sum on a community already at the end of
its resources had a lasting and terrible effect upon the town. The
Chapterhouse were obliged to remit half their rents from the farmers
ruined by the war. All debts had to receive special postponement, and
commerce suffered almost as fatally as agriculture. All over Rouen
houses were continually being put up to auction for public or private
defalcations, to be bought by those Englishmen who had not been
already given estates as a reward for their services. The buildings
of the Abbey of St. Ouen were entirely occupied by the men of the Duke
of Suffolk, so that the archbishop of 1423 was unable to pass the
night before his entry in the abbey, as of immemorial custom, because
the English filled up every inch of it. Of the exquisite east end we
can see now, not much more than the beautiful little "Tour aux Clercs"
of the older abbey was standing in 1419. But it may be put down as one
of the few things creditable to the English occupation that part of
the nave was certainly finished under their encouragement (see Chap.
X.). Meanwhile the King took care to strengthen the castle at the
Porte Bouvreuil, and the barbacan at the bridge; and his own palace
began to rise near the Tour Malsifrotte and the Porte du Pre de la
Bataille. Nothing now remains of it save the name of "Rue du Vieux
Palais" in the Quartier St. Eloi (see map D). But it served in the
first years as a residence for the Duke of Bedford, and for the young
King Henry VI.

[Illus