gle into England, and their presence led
to a possession in Sussex being called "Honor de Aquila." When
South-Saxon antiquaries, or possibly lawyers, of whatever age,
translated this into "the Honour of the Eagle," they plainly did not
know that _Aquila_, _Laigle_, was a real place from which men had taken
their name and brought it into Sussex. And we have heard of an
Englishman being christened "Richard de Aquila," as if it were hopeless
trying to put "de Aquila" into plain English. We have also heard of a
man being christened "Joseph of Arimathaea"; but that was at least in
English, and not in French, Latin, or Hebrew.

"Richard de Aquila" is a form notable on another ground, as implying a
confusion between the two wholly distinct names of _Richard_ and
_Richer_. We do not at this moment remember a Richard of Laigle, but
Richer of Laigle is, perhaps, the man of his house who is best worth
remembering. He lived in the days of the Conqueror, he bears the best
character possible in those times, and his one recorded act bears it
out. He was fighting for William, Duke and king, against that castle of
Sainte-Susanne in Maine which the Conqueror of Le Mans and Exeter could
not take. In a skirmish below the castle a beardless-boy, sheltered
behind a thicket, aimed an arrow which gave Richer a mortal wound. His
comrades would have killed the lad; but Richer bade them spare him; his
own sins deserved death. For want of a priest, he confessed those sins
to his comrades, and died.

The lords of Laigle did plenty of other things besides this; but it is
the thought of the last act of Richer which cleaves most firmly in the
memory, and makes us most wish to see the place where the lords of
Laigle dwelled. And we set out with some vague notion, a notion not
exactly to be fulfilled, that the home of the lords of Laigle--"domini
de Aquila"--must be something of an eagle's nest. But alas, when we
reach Laigle from Argentan, we find that, with all its historic
associations, it is in itself far from being a town of the same interest
as Argentan. The position of the two is quite different. The chief
buildings of Argentan cover a small hill in the midst of scenery in no
way strongly marked. Laigle covers the slope of the hill which forms one
side of the valley of the young Rille, while another height matches it
on the opposite side. At Laigle the chief church, standing out with a
dignity which it hardly keeps when we come near to it, is th