“Dii cujus jurare timent et fallere numen.”

William the Conqueror, upon the dedication of the abbey of St. Stephen, collected the bodies of all the saints in Normandy[92].

Those who wish to be informed of the acts and deeds of St. Ouen, may refer to Pommeraye’s history of the convent, in which thirty-seven folio pages are filled with his life and miracles; the latter commencing while he was in long clothes.  The monastery, under his protection, continued to increase in reputation; and, in the year 1042, the abbatial mitre devolved upon William, son of Richard IInd, Duke of Normandy, who laid the foundation of a new church, which, after about eighty years, was completed and consecrated by William Balot, next but one to him in the succession[93].

But this church did not exist long:  ten years only had elapsed when a fire reduced it, together with the whole abbey, to ashes.  An opportunity was thus afforded to the sovereign to shew his munificence, and Richard Coeur de Lion was not tardy in availing himself of it; but a second fire in 1248 again dislodged the monks; and they continued houseless, till the abbot, Jean Rousel, better known by the name of Mardargent, laid the foundation in 1318, of the present structure, an honor to himself, to the city, and to the nation.  By this prelate the building was perfected as far as the transept:  the rest was the work of subsequent periods, and was not completed till the prelacy of Bohier, who died in the beginning of the sixteenth century.

To speak more properly, I ought rather to say that it was not till then brought to its present state; for it was never completed.  The western front is still imperfect.  According to the original design, it was to have been flanked by magnificent towers, ending in a combination of open arches and tracery, corresponding with the outline and fashion of the central tower.  These towers, which are now only raised to the height of about fifty feet, jut diagonally from the angles of the facade; and it was intended that, in the lower division, they should have been united by a porch of three arches, somewhat resembling the west entrance of Peterborough; and such as in this town is still seen, at St. Maclou, though on a much larger scale.  Pommeraye has given an engraving of this intended front, taken from a drawing preserved in the archives of the abbey.  The engraving is miserably executed; but it enables us to understand the lines of the projected building.  Pommeraye has also preserved details of other parts of the church, among them of the beautiful rood-loft erected by the Cardinal d’Etouteville, and long an object of general admiration.  The bronze doors of this screen were of a most singular and elegant pattern:  Horace Walpole imitated them in his bed-room, at Strawberry-Hill.  The rood-loft, which had been maimed by the Huguenots, was destroyed at the revolution; when the church was also deprived of its celebrated clock, which told the days of the month, the festivals, and the phases of the moon, and afforded other astronomical information.  Such gazers as heeded not these mysteries, were amused by a little bronze statue of St. Michael, who sallied forth at every hour, and announced the progress of time, by the number of strokes which he inflicted on the Devil with his lance.