History from this time forward relates but little concerning Lisieux.  Though surrounded with walls during the bishopric of John, who was promoted to the see early in the twelfth century, the situation of the town, far from the coast or from the frontiers of the province, rendered the inhabitants naturally unwarlike, and caused them in general to submit quietly to the stronger party.—­Brito, in his Philippiad, says that, when Philip Augustus took Lisieux, in 1213, the Lexovians, destitute of fountains, disputed with the toads for the water of the muddy ditches.  His mentioning such a fact is curious, as shewing that public fountains were at that early period of frequent occurrence in Normandy.—­Our countrymen, in the fifteenth century, acted with great rigor, to use the mildest terms, towards Lisieux.  Henry, after landing at Touques, in 1417, entered the town, in the character of an enraged enemy, not as the sovereign of his people:  he gave it up to plunder; and even the public archives were not spared.  The cruelty of our English king is strongly contrasted by the conduct of the Count de Danois, general of the army of Charles VIIth, to whom the town capitulated in 1449.  Thomas Basin, then bishop, negociated with such ability, that, according to Monstrelet, “not the slightest damage was done to any individual, but each peaceably enjoyed his property as before the surrender.”

The most celebrated monasteries within the diocese of Lisieux were the Benedictine abbeys of Bernay, St. Evroul, Preaux, and Cormeilles.—­Cormeilles was founded by William Fitz-Osborne, a relation to William the Conqueror, at whose court he held the office of sewer, and by whom he was promoted to the earldom of Hereford.  Its church and monastic buildings had so far gone to ruin, in the last century, as to call forth a strong remonstrance from Mabillon[69]:  they were afterwards repaired by Charles of Orleans, who was appointed abbot in 1726.—­The abbey of Preaux is said to have existed prior to the invasion of the Normans; but its earliest records go no farther back than the middle of the eleventh century, when it was restored by Humphrey de Vetulis, who built and inclosed the monastery about the year 1035, at which time Duke Robert undertook his pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  This abbey, according to the account given by Gough, in his Alien Priories, presented to thirty benefices, and enjoyed an annual revenue of twenty thousand livres.—­Among its English lands which were considerable, was the priory of Toft-Monks in our own immediate vicinity:  the name, as you know, remains, though no traces of the building are now in existence.