city and liberties of Lisieux, and finally obtained a sentence from the Norman court of exchequer, whereby the privileges of the dukes of the province were restricted to what was called the _Placitum Spathæ_, consisting of the right of billetting soldiers, of coining money, and of hearing and determining in cases of appeal. The decision is honorable both to the independence of the court, and the vigor of the prelate.--In times nearer to our own, a bishop of Lisieux, Jean Hennuyer, obtained a very different distinction. Authors are strangely at variance whether this prelate is to be regarded as the protector or the persecutor of the protestants. All agree that his church suffered materially from the excesses of the Huguenots, in 1562, and that, on the following year, he received public thanks from the Cardinal of Bourbon, for the firmness with which he had opposed them; but the point at issue is, whether, after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, ten years subsequently, he withstood the sanguinary orders from the court to put the Huguenots to the sword, or whether he endeavored, as far as lay in his power, to forward the pious labor of extirpating the heretics, but was himself effectually resisted by the king's own lieutenant.--Sammarthanus tells us that the first of these traditions rests solely upon the authority of Anthony Mallet[65] but it obtained general credence till within the last three years, when a very well-informed writer, in the _Mercure de France_, and subsequently in the article _Hennuyer_ in the _Bibliographie Universelle_, espoused, and has apparently established, the opposite opinion.