8, in the castle of St.
Sauveur, by Richard Neel, the second viscount; a foundation, which, only
fifty years afterwards, was suppressed, and replaced by a society of
Benedictines from Jumieges. Changes of this description were by no means
unfrequent in those unsettled times: indeed, regarding the character of
the chieftains and the clergy, it is rather matter of surprise, that
they did not occur more commonly; and greater astonishment may be
entertained at the Viscount of St. Sauveur having suffered a body of
men, naturally imperious, and necessarily guided by interests different
from his own, to remain about a century under his roof, than to find him
afterwards removing them to the spot which they subsequently continued
to occupy. The original charter, granted by Neel to the monks from
Jumieges, is preserved among the documents in the _Gallia Christiana_.
His brother, Roger, is said to have superintended the erection of the
new monastery, in which pious task, he was assisted by Laetitia, his
niece, sole heiress of Neel, and now married to Jourdain Taisson, who
had, in her right, become lord of St. Sauveur. This Jourdain, with his
wife, and their three sons, was present at the dedication of the church;
so that the building of it may safely be referred to the early part of
the twelfth century. M. de Gerville, upon the authority of the Memoirs
of the Harcourt Family, states, that some of these latter also assisted
in the construction; and yet he is unwilling to admit that any portion
of it was erected in the following century, when the Harcourts became
possessed of the domain. He contends, that "the whole style of the
building indicates a period approaching the year 1100; at which time the
struggle existed between the pointed and the semi-circular
architecture." Setting aside the long-contested question concerning the
date of the introduction of the pointed arch, I cannot help, for my own
part, suspecting, that the Lady-Chapel was a subsequent erection, and,
probably, of the aera of the Harcourts. Its narrow trefoil-headed windows
above, and the plainer ones below, seem decisively to indicate such a
period; and the deep buttresses afford another, not less positive, mark.
The lower part of this portion of the church, exhibits an architectural
peculiarity deserving of notice: the wall is considerably widest, where
it unites with the ground; after which, it gradually decreases in size,
by successive tiers, for a few feet upwar