s to be the famous Abbey of St. Ouen[5] were laid by
the first Hlothair. Others say that a church founded nearly two
centuries before was restored by the son of Hlotild the holy Queen
and dedicated first to the Holy Apostles, and then to St. Peter and
St. Paul. Its name was changed to the one it bears now in 686 when the
body of St. Ouen was moved there on Ascension Day three years after
his death. But not a trace of the original church remains, and most
probably it was built almost entirely of wood, like that shrine of St.
Martin in which Brunhilda and her young husband fled for sanctuary in
about the year 580. In this same century we first hear too of that
legendary Kingdom of Yvetot, whose lord was freed from all service to
the Royal House of France by the penitence of King Hlothair. Its
history is chiefly confined to the airy fantasies of poets, and is
completely justified of its existence by Beranger's verses:

"Il etait un roi d'Yvetot
Peu connu dans l'histoire
Se levant tard se couchant tot
Dormant fort bien sans gloire
Et couronne par Jeanneton
D'un simple bonnet de coton,"

which may very well serve as the epitome and epitaph of a lazy
independence that needed no more serious chronicler.[6]

[Footnote 5: "In manu gothica," he says, with a phrase that was to
produce a very pretty quarrel later on.]

[Footnote 6: This jovial monarch is mentioned in a legal decree of
1392. He retires into obscurity during the English Occupation, and is
restored, curiously enough, by the sombre Louis XI. in 1461, and freed
from all taxes and subsidies. At the entry of Charles VIII. in 1485
(see Chap. X.) he makes a very appropriate appearance. In 1543
Francois Premier mentions a "Reine d'Yvetot." In 1610 Martin du
Bellay, Sieur de Langey and Lieutenant General of Normandy, was hailed
as "Mon petit roi d'Yvetot" by Henri Quatre at the coronation of Marie
de Medicis. In 1783 the last "documentary" evidence occurs in the
inscription on two boundary-stones: "Franchise de la Principaute
d'Yvetot."]

[Illustration: CHAPELLE DE LA FIERTE DE ST. ROMAIN IN THE PLACE DE LA
HAUTE VIELLE TOUR]

Early in the next century occurs the name of a saint who was destined
to be famous in the story of the town from its earliest days of civic
life until the chaos of the Revolution, in which the old order fell to
pieces and carried so many picturesque and harmless ceremonies into
the limbo where it swept away