All went well for some years, but in 1497 the _bourgeois_ grumbled greatly, and in 1498, with the connivance of the municipal authorities themselves, they broke out. On the eve of the Holy Innocents, between nine and ten o’clock, Jacques de l’Arcq, mayor of the _Edwardeurs_, and others got into the house of Messire Pasquier le Pâme, a chaplain, and dragged him half naked, through snow and frost, to a _cabaret_. Seven or eight other vicars, one of whom was found saying his Hours in a churchyard, were similarly treated, and as none of them would be made _évesque des sotz_ they were all kept prisoners. The chapter protested to the _prévost et jurez_, but in vain. On the following day the _bourgeois_ chose one of the vicars _évesque_, baptized him by torchlight with three buckets of water at a fountain, led him about for three days in a surplice, and played scurrilous farces. They then dismissed the vicar, and elected as _évesque_ a clerk from the diocese of Cambrai, who defied the chapter. They drove Jean Parisiz, the _curé_ of La Madeleine, who had displeased them, from his church in the midst of Vespers, and on Epiphany day made him too a prisoner. In the following March the chapter and Messire Jean Parisiz brought a joint action before the High Court at Paris against the delinquents and the municipal authorities, who had backed them up. The case came on for hearing in November, when it was pleaded that the custom of electing an _évesque des sotz_ upon Innocents’ day was an ancient one. The ceremony took place upon a scaffold near the church door; there were _jeux_ in the streets for seven or eight days, and a final _convici_ in which the canons and others of the town were satirized. The chapter and some of the citizens sent bread and wine. The same thing was done in many dioceses of Picardy, and even in Paris. It was all _ad solacium populi_, and divine service was not disturbed, for nobody entered the church. The vicar who had been chosen _évesque_ thought it a great and unexpected honour. There would have been no trouble had not the _évesque_ when distributing hoods with ears at the end of the _jeux_ unfortunately included certain persons who would rather have been left out, and who consequently stirred up the chapter to take action. The court adjourned the case, and ultimately it appears to have been settled, for one of the documents preserved is endorsed with a note of a _concordat_ between the chapter and the town, by which the feast was abolished in 1500[1084].