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But there is little at the present time at Argentan to remind one that it is in any way associated with the murder of Becket. The castle that now exists is occupied by the Courts of Justice and was partially built in the Renaissance period.
The town sprang up again; in course of time, when Argentan flourished under princely favour, it grew beyond its old bounds. The growth of the inhabited town called for a wider circuit of walls. The new suburbs, with the church of Saint Martin, were taken within the fortified area. Argentan no longer merely looked down on the Orne, but was washed by it.
And we set out with some vague notion, a notion not exactly to be fulfilled, that the home of the lords of Laigle "domini de Aquila" must be something of an eagle's nest. But alas, when we reach Laigle from Argentan, we find that, with all its historic associations, it is in itself far from being a town of the same interest as Argentan. The position of the two is quite different.
Its east end crowds right up against the pavement and it is somewhat unusual to find the entrances at this portion of the building. The stained glass in the choir of St Martin is its most noticeable feature the pictures showing various scenes in the life of Christ. As in all French towns Argentan knows how to decorate on fete days.
No building better shows what a long fight was waged between the two styles. Saint German at Argentan is not like Saint Eustace, where we see a grand Gothic conception carried out without a single correct Gothic detail. Here not only the conception, but the great mass of the internal detail, is purely Gothic; the new fashion thrusts itself in only in particular parts.
The name of Tenarcebrai is written in our own Chronicles; so is that of Argentses; only is that really Argentan or only Argences?
In short we have here, as we have seen in many places, specially at Troyes, as we shall see again in a most marked form at Argentan, that curious process of transition from mediæval to Renaissance detail which in England we are familiar with in houses, but which in France is to be largely studied in churches also.
Four knights who had heard the king's first outburst of rage had secretly left the Court, and travelling day and night, had reached Canterbury on the 29th, and had there in the cathedral slain the archbishop. Henry was at Argentan when the news of the murder was brought to him. So overwhelming was his despair that those about him feared for his reason.
His vice-chancellor, Adam, who thought he owed much to the elder king, attempted to send him a report of his son's doings; but when he was detected, the young Henry, finding that he could not put him to death as he would have liked to do because the Bishop of Poitiers claimed him as a clerk, ordered him to be sent to imprisonment in Argentan and to be scourged as a traitor in all the towns through which he passed on the way.
As soon as she learned of her father's death, she entered Normandy from the south, near Domfront, and was admitted to that town and to Argentan and Exmes without opposition by the viscount of that region, who was one of King Henry's "new men" in Normandy, and who recognized her claims at once.
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