So it is that we find this first recorded prisoner, Chevalier Richard, speaking of the "Privilège" as "_en l'honneur de la glorieuse Vierge Marie et de Saint Romain_."[24] By 1210, therefore, these two holy names had become definitely associated with the "Levée de la Fierte," and the _fierte_ was already raised upon the shoulders of the prisoner to signify the new yoke of the Christian religion which he took upon him in exchange for the sins from whose consequence he had been mercifully delivered. Where Chevalier Richard, in 1210, raised the jewelled shrine of the relics of St. Romain, at the chapel of the old castle of the Dukes of Normandy, on the very same spot did Nicolas Béhérie and his wife raise it in 1790, on the last occasion when the "Privilège" was exercised. The custom had continued through the centuries in the place of its origin, though Norman castles had been replaced by the prison of Philip Augustus, though the Baillage had been built, though the Englishmen under Henry V. had taken the town, though the Conciergerie of later reigns existed. The conservatism of the Church had led her thus unconsciously to preserve the secret of the origin of her Privilege from the days when the prisons of the last Norman dukes had been the only appropriate scene for her most striking and gorgeous public ceremony.
[Footnote 24: With this phrase in 1210 compare the words recorded in MS. 69 in the Rouen Library, where the privilege is spoken of as "_accordé à la Sainte vierge Marie et au bienheureux Saint Romain_," in 1299.]
The little open chapel built upon the same spot now (see p. 37), saw the last deliverance of 1790, and still preserves the name of the "_Fierte St. Romain_." An excellent and well-proportioned example of the architecture of the sixteenth century, it was used for the first time in 1543, and shows in every detail of its construction and arrangement that it was expressly planned for this especial ceremony. Of the ceremony itself I shall have more to say later on. For the present I must content myself with this necessary explanation of its origin and locality. From the lists of the prisoners I shall very frequently have occasion to take a striking example of the manners of the time, as the tale of the city is gradually unfolded, in which this Privilège de St. Romain is perhaps the most exceptional and striking feature. But it is only by the second half of the fourteenth century that the names are written down with a sufficient regularity to admit of useful reference. During the thirteenth century, at which I have now arrived, there are only three names actually preserved, though the continuation of the Privilege is fully proved by the inevitable quarrels between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities, of which conspicuous examples occur in 1207 and in 1299.