United States or Sweden ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When the Danish ships appeared off our shores, in the two centuries following, Bamburgh was attacked and plundered several times. In the days of William Rufus, as we have seen, Robert de Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, rebelled against the Red King, in company with his uncle the Bishop of Coutances, Robert of Normandy, and William of St. Carileph, Bishop of Durham.
With all fit instructions as to where I was to go at Coutances, and the priests that would there send me onwards to the duke, I jumped upon my steed, and in all fair array, as befitted a youth of high rank, alone I left St Michael de Tombelaine, and leaving Pontorson behind me, and having the blue water all the way on my left, reached Avranches by noon.
Their reason for doing so at this hour was that they wished to lay in a stock of provisions, as they did not intend to enter Coutances until late at night; when they hoped to be able to get hold of a boat, at once. They had just made their purchases when they met a fat little man, with a red sash which showed him to be the Maire of the place, or some other public functionary.
Modern arrangements have transferred their ecclesiastical allegiance to the church of Winchester, and their civil allegiance to the Empire of India; but historically those islands are that part of the land of Coutances which remained Norman while the rest stooped to become French.
I believe the French nation was, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the greatest in the world; and that the French not only invented Gothic architecture, but carried it to a perfection which no other nation has approached, then or since: but, however this may be, there can be no doubt that the towers of Coutances, if not the earliest, are among the very earliest, examples of the fully developed spire.
"The seats to be reserved in the tribune were for these ladies?" No time had been lost, you perceive. We were strangers; the courtesies of the town were to be extended to us. We were to have of their best, here in Coutances; and their best, just now, was this mise en scene in their court room. The stage was well set. The Frenchman's instinctive sense of fitness was obvious in the arrangements.
Coutances has won a fame among professed architectural students almost higher than it deserves, but we fancy that the city lies rather out of the beat of the ordinary tourist. Dol is surely quite out of the world; we trust that, in joining it with the other two, we may share somewhat of the honours of discovery.
They bought a pocket map of the north of France, and carefully studied the roads. "It is plain enough what our best course is, Dick. We must go along this projecting point of Brittany through Dinan to Avranches, and then follow the coast up till we get to Coutances.
To be the niece of a Coutances uncle this was enough, it appears, for the good people of this cathedral city, to insure the flow of their tears and the gift of their prayers. When we stepped forth into the streets, it was to find a flower strewn city. The paving stones were covered with the needles of pines, with fir boughs, with rose leaves, lily stocks, and with the petals of flock and clematis.
Wilfred. It was his last act and deed on earth: within a few hours he perished in the flames which consumed our poor dwelling." Here Father Kenelm, not without emotion, handed a second parchment to Geoffrey. "And this?" said he of Coutances, interrogatively. "Is the confession of a dying Norman, which he has attested by his mark, for he could not write his name.
Word Of The Day