d Fecamp
with an equally friendly eye; till, in process of time, the increasing
splendor of its monastery altogether eclipsed the waning honors of the
town; and Henry II. of England, finally sealed its downfall, by making a
regular donation of the town to the abbey, from which period till the
revolution, the latter was every thing, the former nothing.

"Fecamp," as it is remarked by Nodier, "was to the Dukes of Normandy,
what the pyramids were to the Egyptian monarchs,--a city of tombs:
Richard II. rested there by the side of Richard I. and, near him, his
brother Robert, his wife Judith, and his son William."[161]--The list
might be lengthened by the addition of many other scarcely less noble
names.

"The abbey of Fecamp is said to have been founded in the year 664 or
666, for a community of nuns, by Waning, the count or governor of the
Pays de Caux, a nobleman who had already contributed to the endowment of
the monastery of St. Wandrille. St. Ouen, Bishop of Rouen, dedicated the
church in the presence of King Clotaire; and so rapidly did the fame of
the sanctity of the abbey extend, that the number of its inmates
amounted, in a very short period, to more than three hundred. The
arrival, however, of the Normans, under Hastings, in 841, caused the
dispersion of the nuns; and the same story is related of the few who
remained at Fecamp, as of many others under similar circumstances, that
they voluntarily cut off their noses and their lips, rather than be an
object of attraction to their conquerors. The abbey, in return for their
heroism, was levelled with the ground; and it did not rise from its
ashes till the year 988, when the piety of Duke Richard I. built the
church anew, under the auspices of his son, Robert, archbishop of Rouen.
Departing, however, from the original foundation, he established therein
a chapter of regular canons, who soon proved so irregular in their
conduct, that within ten years they were doomed to give way to a body of
Benedictine monks, headed by an abbot, named William, from a convent at
Dijon. From his time the monastery continued to increase in splendor.
Three suffragan abbeys, that of Notre Dame at Bernay, of St. Taurin at
Evreux, and of Ste. Berthe de Blangi, in the diocese of Boullogne, owned
the superior power of the abbot of Fecamp, and supplied the three
mitres, which he proudly bore on his abbatial shield. Kings and princes,
in former ages, frequently paid the abbey the homage of their