house; the abbot of Caen prized a cellar and an exemption from wine-dues which he owed to the generosity of William the Conqueror; the clerks and chaplains of the king's household took advantage of their opportunities to acquire rents and houses at Rouen, as well as at London and Winchester.
Unfortunately no one has left us in this period a description the busy life of Rouen such as Fitz Stephen has given of contemporary London, and it is only with the imagination that we can bring before our eyes the ships at their wharves with their bales of marten-skins from Ireland and casks of wine from Burgundy and the south, the fullers and dyers, millers and tanners plying their trades along the Eau de Robec, the burgesses trafficking in the streets and the cathedral close, the royal clerks and serjeants hastening on their master's business. Still more to be regretted is the disappearance of those material remains of its ancient splendor which until the last century retained the form and flavor, if not the actual wood and stone, of the mediæval city. To-day scarcely anything survives above ground of the Rouen of the dukes—of its walls and gates, destroyed by Philip Augustus, of the castle by the river, with the tower from which Henry I threw the traitor Conan and the great hall and rooms renewed by his grandson, of the stone bridge of the Empress Matilda, of the royal park and palace across the Seine at Quevilly. Only the great St. Romain's tower of the cathedral and an early bit of the
