282 
GAME LAWS. 
matter being brought to the notice of good King Louis, Sir 
Enguerrand was summoned to appear, and, finally, after many 
feudal shifts and dilatory pleas, brought to trial before Louis 
himself 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 inclined to inflict the punish¬ 
ment of death on the proud baron. “If he believed,” said he, 
“ that our 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 pre¬ 
vailed. The king was persuaded to inflict a milder retribu¬ 
tion, 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.” * The 
hope of shortening the purgatorial term of the young persons, 
by the religious rites to be celebrated in the chapels, was 
doubtless the consideration which operated most powerfully 
on the mind of the king ; and Europe lost a great example for 
the sake of a mass. 
The desolation and depopulation, resulting from the exten- 
throned. In this case, however, the prince hilled the trespasser with his 
own hand, his sergeants refusing to execute his mandate. 
* Guillaume de Nangis, as quoted in the notes to Joinville, N'ouvelle 
Collection des Memoires , etc., par Michaud et Poujoulat, premiere serie, i, 
p. 335. 
Persons acquainted with the character and influence of the medioeval 
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 the priests were cunning enough both to secure 
to themselves the amount of the fine, and to extort from Louis large ad¬ 
ditional grants to carry out the purposes to which they devoted the money. 
“ And though the king did take the moneys,” says the chronicler, “ he put 
them not into his treasury, but turned them into good works; for he 
builded therewith the religious house of Pontoise, and endowed the same 
with rents and lands; also the schools and the dormitory of the friars 
preachers of Paris, and the monastery of the Minorite friars.” 
