With such examples in the seats of Royalty, one can feel little surprise at the charges of venality, and worse, which were brought from time to time against the Provosts. In the reign of Philippe le Long, a certain wealthy citizen lay under sentence of death in the Châtelet. The Provost Henri Caperel made him a private proposal of ransom, a bargain was struck. Dives was set free, and the Provost hanged some obscure prisoner in his stead. Provost Hugues de Cruzy is said to have trafficked openly at the Châtelet in much the same way, Royalty itself sharing the booty with him. Now and again, justice took her revenge; and both Henri Caperel and Hugues de Cruzy finished on the gallows. The noble brigand, highwayman, and cut-throat, Jourdain de Lisle, who led a numerous band in the fourteenth century, bought the interest of the Provost of Paris; and the Châtelet "refused to take cognisance of his eighteen crimes, the least of which would have brought to an ignominious death any other criminal." A new Provost had to be appointed before Jourdain de Lisle, tied to the tail of a horse, could be dragged through the streets of Paris to the public gallows. He had married a niece of Pope Jean XXII., and when justice had been done, the curé of the church of Saint-Merri wrote to Rome: "Scarcely had your Holiness's nephew been hanged, when, with much pomp, we fetched him from the gibbet to our church, and there buried him _honorablement et gratis_." ------- Ordinarily, the Châtelet relied for its defence upon the archers of the Provost's guard, a reedy support when the mob turned out in force. It was seized in 1320 by the _Pastoureaux_, a swarm of peasants who had united themselves under two apostate priests, and who said they were "going across the sea to combat the enemies of the faith and conquer the Holy Land." To rescue some of their number who had been arrested and thrown into the Châtelet, they marched on that place, broke open the gaol, and effected a general delivery of the prisoners, as Madame de Bourgueil was to do some two centuries later.