GAME LAWS. 341' 



seigniors it was a standing excuse for having killed game on for- 

 bidden ground, that they aimed at a serf." The feudal lords 

 enforced these codes with unrelenting rigor, and not unf requently 

 took the law into their own hands. In the time of Louis IX., 

 according to "WiUiam of Nangis, " three noble children, born in 

 Flanders, who were sojourning at the abbey of St. Nicholas in 

 the Wood, to learn the speech of France, went out into the forest 

 of the abbey, with their bows and iron-headed arrows, to disport 

 them in shooting hares, chased the game, which they had started 

 in the wood of the abbey, into the forest of Enguerrand, lord of 

 Coucy, and were taken by the sergeants which kept the wood. 

 When the fell and pitiless Sir Enguerrand knew this, he had the 

 children straightway hanged without any manner of trial."* 

 The matter being brought to the notice of good King Louis, Sir 

 Enguerrand was summoned to appear, and, finally, after many 

 feudal sliifts and dilatory pleas, brought to trial before Louis 

 himseK and a special council. Notwithstanding the opposition 

 of the other seigniors, who, it is needless to say, spared no efforts 

 to save a peer, probably not a greater criminal than themselves, 

 the king was much inchned to inflict the punishment of death 

 on the proud baron. " If he beheved," said he, " that om* Lord 

 would be as well content with hanging as with pardoning, he 

 would hang Sir Enguerrand in spite of all his barons"; but 

 noble and clerical interests unfortunately prevailed. The king 

 was persuaded to inflict a milder retribution, and the murderer 

 was condemned to pay ten thousand livres in coin, and to " build 

 for the souls of the three children two chapels wherein mass 

 should be said every day." f The hope of shortening the purga- 



* It is painful to add that a similar outrage was perpetrated a very few years 

 ago, in one of the European states, by a prince of a family now dethroned. 

 In this case, however, the prince killed the trespasser with his own hand, his 

 sergeants refusing to execute his mandate. 



f GuiLLAtTME DE Nangis, as quotcd in the notes to JotNvrLLE, Nouvelle 

 Collection des Memoires, etp., par Michaud et Poujoulat, premiere serie, i., p. 

 335. 



Persons acquainted with the character and influence of the mediaeval clergy 

 will hardly need to be informed that the ten thousand livres never found their 

 way to the royal exchequer. It was easy to prove to the simple-minded king 

 that, as the profits of sin were a monopoly of the church, he ought not to 

 derive advantage from the commission of a crime by one of his subjects ; and 



