Only three years afterwards, Blanche, Dowager-Queen of France, had laid her hand by way of justice upon Jehan le Bourgeois of Neufchatel in spite of the fact that his murder had been pardoned by the canons' Privilège de St. Romain; and from this case, and the following one in 1391, it appears that the pardon given to a prisoner involved that (apart from "civil" restitutions) he was released from any "criminal" fine that might have been laid on him, and was of right to be restored to all offices and goods held by him previous to his arrest. More than this, the Bailli of Rouen was not allowed to condemn any prisoner at all during the month that intervened between the "insinuation of the privilège" and the actual ceremony of the pardon; the "insinuation" being the technical word for the annual formality by which the legal authorities were informed that the Chapter would inquire into the various prisons of the town, and proceed to make their choice before Ascension. In one case a prisoner condemned to death (Robert Auberbosc in 1299) was only just saved (though he was not finally chosen for the Fierte) at the last moment from the gallows, whither he had been taken during this sacred period, contrary to the rights of the chapter; and again in 1361 the Bailli had actually executed a man in the same interval before the canons knew, or could prevent it; and he was then and there solemnly excommunicated until full amendment had been made, for that he had been so wicked as to "violer le prévilége et libertés de l'église de Rouen, en vitupère de la dicte église et de Monsieur St. Romain."
The first woman to whom the famous privilege was accorded was Guillemette Gomont in 1380, of whom nothing is recorded; but in the next year strangely enough another woman carried the Fierte, by name Jehanne Hélart, the wife of Robert Cariel, who had slain Jehan Vengier; and in 1388 Estiennotte de Naples, who had been brought from Louvier to marry Guillaume Luart, of the parish of St. Vincent in Rouen, was pardoned by the Chapter in spite of having murdered her husband. In this example, as in many others, to our modern eyes, the motives which persuaded the canons to pardon the criminal they chose are scarcely intelligible, and I can only imagine that the key to the tragedy has been lost in most of such cases. But it is the women who are at the bottom of nearly all recorded crime in the long story of the Fierte, and when they are themselves chosen it is often at the end of a drama that surpasses in interest all the tales of mere masculine malefactors in the most interesting criminal record I have ever seen. I shall have occasion to speak of them later. For the present I can only take note of the cases that have been most prominent before the time of the English siege.