. And we have both the tump and the church of Exmes thrown in
[Greek: en parergoo]. It is not at all a bad two days' work that we have
done in the immediate land of the _Oximenses_.

LAIGLE AND SAINT-EVROUL

1892

Our next halting-place is Laigle on the Rille, the Rille that runs out
to flow by Brionne and the Bec of Herlouin. We choose it as a
halting-place less from any merits of its own than because it is the
best centre for some very remarkable places indeed, and because the
place itself calls up certain associations. There is, perhaps, more
interest attaching to the name of Laigle and to the lords of Laigle than
to Laigle itself. Its name supplies us with the crowning instance of the
singular incapacity of so many in England to understand that these
Norman towns and castles are real places. They give surnames to a crowd
of men who figure in the English history of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries; but, as we have said before, hardly anybody seems to
understand that those surnames are taken from places which are still
standing, and to most of which the railway is open. There is the
renowned Bishop William of Durham in the days of the Conqueror and the
Red King, the greatest name in the history of Romanesque art. He is
_Willelmus de Sancto Carilefo_, just like William of Malmesbury or
William of Newburgh, simply because he had been monk and prior in the
monastery of _Sanctus Carilefus_, in modern form, _Saint-Calais_, in the
land of Maine. It is better to say "William of Saint-Calais" than
"William of Saint-Carilef," because the use of the modern form shows
that we know where the place is; but "William of Saint-Carilef" is not
so bad as "Bishop Carilef," as if Carilef were no place at all, and as
if it had been usual in those days to talk of Bishops or anybody else by
their casual surnames. So with Laigle, _Aquila_, a place which must have
somehow taken its name from an eagle, possibly from some incident or
legend, as there is certainly nothing in the look of Laigle to suggest
eagles in a general way. Its lords of course called themselves
"Gilbertus," "Richeras," or anything else "de Aquila," "of Laigle." On
the whole, for the same reason as in the case of Saint-Calais, it is
better to speak in English of the place and its lords by the now
received form _Laigle_ rather than _L'Aigle_, though _L'Aigle_ is not
quite forgotten on the spot. But the events of the Norman Conquest
brought men of the house of Lai