The inquiry, however, will not be discontinued[78]:  there are still hopes of success, especially in the crypt, which corresponds in its architecture with the church above.  It is filled with columns placed in four ranges, each standing only four feet from the other, all of elegant proportions, with diversified capitals, as those in the choir.—­Round it runs a stone bench, as in the subterraneous chapel in St. Gervais, at Rouen.

Founded by a queen, the abbey of the Trinity preserved at all times a constitution thoroughly aristocratical.  No individual, except of noble birth, was allowed to take the veil here, or could be received into the community.  You will see in the series of the abbesses the names of Bourbon, Valois, Albret, Montmorenci, and others of the most illustrious families in France.  Cecily, the Conqueror’s eldest daughter, stands at the head of the list.  According to the Gallia Christiana, she was devoted by her parents to this holy office, upon the very day of the dedication of the convent, in July 1066.

The black marble slab which covered her remains, was lately discovered in the chapter-house.  A crozier is sculptured upon it.  It is delineated in a very curious volume now in the possession of the Abbe de la Rue, which contains drawings of all the tombs and inscriptions that formerly existed in the abbey.

The annual income of the monastery of the Trinity is stated by Gough, in his Alien Priories, at thirty thousand livres, and that of the monastery of St. Stephen, at sixty thousand; but Ducarel estimates the revenue of the former at seventy thousand, and of the latter at two hundred thousand; and I should not doubt but that the larger sums are nearest the truth; indeed, the grants and charters still in existence, or noticed by historians, would rather lead to the supposition that the revenues must have been even greater.  Parsimony in the endowment of religious buildings, was not a prevailing vice in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.  Least of all was it likely that it should be practised in the case of establishments, thus founded in expiation of the transgressions of wealthy and powerful sinners.  Page after page, in the charters, is filled with the list of those, who, with

   “Lands and livings, many a rood,
    Had gifted the shrine for their soul’s repose.”

The privileges and immunities enjoyed by these abbeys were very extensive.  Both of them were from their origin exempted by Pope Alexander IInd, with the consent of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, from all episcopal jurisdiction; and both had full power, as well spiritual as ecclesiastical, over the members of their own communities, and over the parishes dependent upon them; with no other appeal than to the archbishop of Rouen, or to the Pope.  Express permission was likewise given to the abbot of St. Stephen’s, by virtue of a bull from Pope Clement VIIth, to wear a gold mitre studded with precious stones, and a ring and sandals, and other episcopal ornaments.