After Richard's death Limoges kept on changing masters as before. In 1355, Edward the Black Prince unfurled the British flag from its battlements, but Bishop Jean de Crose, in whose charge he had left it, delivered it over to the king of France. Edward returned in wrath, recaptured it and put many of the inhabitants to the sword. Under Charles VII. Limoges became permanently a French city, retaining its peculiar form of local government by twelve consuls, which constituted it a sort of independent republic. As Jeanne d'Albret, mother of Henry of Navarre, was viscountess of Limoges, it was impossible that the surrounding province should escape being drawn into the wars of religion. At Roche l'Abeille, a few miles south of the city, is the battle-field where Admiral Coligny's Protestant army met and defeated the royal forces under the duke of Anjou. But with the accession of Henry IV. came a new order of things, and the visit of that monarch in 1605 opened an era of industry, prosperity and peace. To this day the butchers of Limoges have good cause to remember Henry's visit. That chivalrous but improvident ruler was always pecuniarily embarrassed, and never, it appears, more so than on that October day when, preceded by the flower of the military, magistracy and ecclesiastical dignitaries of the province, he rode in through the gorgeous gateway surmounted by a colossal figure of the giant Limovex, the traditional founder of the city, which held a silver key in the right hand and a heart in the left, by way of tendering to His Majesty the submission and affections of the city. The butchers' guild was at that period notoriously prosperous and wealthy. A happy conceit entered the royal mind. For and in consideration of a handsome sum of money and so many horses he offered to accord them in perpetuity the right of heading the escort whenever thereafter royalty should enter the city. The butchers took up the offer, paid the cash, produced the required number of horses, and in return received a charter and privileges which they have jealously guarded to this day. In 1810, when the duc de Berri, and in 1844, when the duc de Montpensier, visited Limoges, the butchers, with their white flag bearing a green cross, led the van in the processions that escorted them. The butchers form a little community, living all to themselves in the heart of the city, and intermarrying to such a degree that only five or six surnames are to be found among the eighty-odd families composing them. In the crooked, narrow little street, only two blocks long, which they inhabit--it is called the Rue des Boucheries--there are none but meat-shops, and the names "Cibeau," "Malvolin" and one or two others predominate on the signs over the doorways. In this babel of patronymics nicknames become necessary to distinguish one from another, and accordingly we find one man known as "_alias_ Louis XVIII.," another as "_alias_ the Captain,"