"Sire Moine, suef alez Al passer planche vus gardez."
[Footnote 13: Students of that invaluable vision of antiquity "Les Contes Drolatiques" will remember that it was also before Duke Richard that Tryballot, the lusty old ruffian known as "Vieulx Par-chemins," was brought up for judgment, and that the statue commemorating His Grace's sympathetic verdict remained in Rouen till the modesty of the English invaders removed it.]
In 996, the Fearless Duke himself gave up the ghost, after having enlarged the Cathedral of Rouen, and given it new pavement.[14] His son, another Richard, like him in name alone, succeeded, and in the first year of the new reign, we hear of a peasant revolt that shows an extraordinary foreshadowing of the changes that were to come after the fateful thousandth year had passed. The keynote of the movement is struck in the strange word used by Wace, that occurs now for the first time in history:
"Asez tost oï Richard dire Ke vilains _cumune_ faseient."
L'iglise de l'Arceveskie De mensam plus riche fie Fist abatre e fere graineur A la Mere Nostre Seignur Plus lunge la fist è plus lée Plus haute è miex empaventée
These downtrodden serfs, of mixed Celtic, Roman, and Frankish parentage, had actually spoken that word of fear to every feudal baron, a "commune." They established a regular representative Parliament with two peasants sent from each district to a general assembly whose decision should be binding on the whole. This was a considerably higher political organisation than the aristocratic household of their masters round the King. And bitterly their masters resented such forward and unscrupulous behaviour. The Duke's uncle, Rudolf, Count of Ivry, crushed the "revolt" with hideous cruelty, and sent back the people's representatives maimed and useless to their hovels. "Legatos cepit," says William of Jumièges, "truncatisque manibus et pedibus _inutiles_ suis remisit," adding with unconscious ferocity "his rustici expertis ad sua aratra sunt reversi." But the germs of freedom did not die, for villenage in Normandy was lighter, and ceased far sooner, than in the rest of France. These first martyrs did not suffer in vain.