THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS QUARRELS WITH SIR CHARLES DE SAVOISY AND WITH THE PROVOST OF PARIS.

At this period, when the university of Paris was making its annual processions, much dissention arose between some of its members, as they were near to St Catherine du Val des Escoliers, and the grooms of sir Charles de Savoisy, chamberlain^[48] to the king of France, who were leading their horses to drink in the river Seine. The cause of the quarrel was owing to some of the grooms riding their horses against the procession, and wounding some of the scholars,—who, displeased at such conduct, attacked them with stones, and knocked some of the riders off their horses.

The grooms, on this, returned to the hÔtel de Savoisy, but soon came back armed with bows and arrows, and accompanied by others of their fellow-servants, when they renewed the attack against the scholars, wounding many with their arrows and staves even when in the church. This caused a great riot. In the end, however, the great number of scholars overpowered them, and drove them back, after several of them had been soundly beaten and badly wounded.

When the procession was concluded, the members of the university waited on the king, to make complaints of the insult offered them, and demanded, by the mouth of their rector, that instant reparation should be made them for the offence which had been committed, such as the case required,—declaring, at the same time, that if it were not done, they would all quit the town of Paris, and fix their residence in some other place, where they might be in safety.

The king made answer, that such punishment should be inflicted on the offenders as that they should be satisfied therewith. In short, after many conferences, in which the members of the university urged their complaints to the king, as well as to the princes of the blood who composed his council, it was ordered by the king, to appease them, that the lord Charles de Savoisy, in reparation for the offence committed by his servants, should be banished from the king’s household, and from those of the princes of the blood, and should be deprived of all his offices. His hÔtel was demolished, and razed to the ground; and he was besides condemned to found two chapelries of one hundred livres each, which were to be in the gift of the university.

After this sentence had been executed, sir Charles de Savoisy quitted France, and lived for some time greatly dispirited in foreign countries, where, however, he conducted himself so temperately and honourably^[49], that at length principally, through the queen of France and some great lords, he made his peace with the university, and, with their approbation, returned again to the king’s household.

Not long after this event, sir William de Tigouville^[50], provost of Paris, caused two clerks of the university to be executed: the one named Legier de Montthilier, a Norman, and the other Olivier Bourgeois, a Breton, accused of having committed divers felonies. For this reason, notwithstanding they were clerks, they were led to execution, and, although they loudly claimed their privileges, as of the clergy, in hopes of being rescued, they were hung on the gibbet. The university, however, caused the provost to be deprived of his office, and to be sentenced to erect a large and high cross of free stone, near the gibbet on the road leading to Paris, on which the figures of the two clerks were carved. They caused him also to have their bodies taken down from the gibbet, and placed in a cart, covered with black cloth; and thus accompanied by him and his sergeants, with others bearing lighted torches of wax, were they carried to the church of St Mathurin, and there delivered by the provost to the rector of the university, who had them honourably interred in the cloisters of this church; and an epitaph was placed over them, to their perpetual remembrance.