From the time of Fulbert onwards, the canons, on one pretext or another, whether by buying houses, claiming jurisdiction, or openly demanding the right of enclosing their cloister by walls and gates, had begun to encroach--so at least it was regarded by Counts and townsmen--upon the domain of Chartres, and to set up by degrees a town within a town, the cloister which stretched from the Rue de Cheval Blanc on the north to the Rue au Lait on the south, and from the Percheronne on the west to the Rue Montonnière, a continuation of the Rue Muret, on the east. The rights claimed by the Chapter were at last acknowledged and established by parliamentary decree, 1470; but only, as we have said, after centuries of bickering with the Counts. They, feeling themselves assailed both as to their pockets and their powers of jurisdiction by the privileges extended by the Church to those who attached themselves to the cloister, expressed their feelings by frequent armed raids into the precincts, pillaging the shops[50] which had sprung up beneath the shade of Notre-Dame and carrying off unfortunate clerks as prisoners to be ransomed from the great Tower. The Church retaliated with its one all-powerful weapon--excommunication. The cloister[51] was finally enclosed by thick walls and by nine gates--mostly destroyed in the eighteenth century; but of some of them traces may still be seen--the _Porte Neuve_ and the _Porte de l’Étroit-Degré_, giving on the Rue du Cheval Blanc; the _Porte des Changes_ (Rue des Changes), and _Porte aux Herbes_ (Rue au Lait), _Porte Évière_, entrance of Rue Saint-Eman; _Porte Percheronne_ (Rue du Soleil-d’Or), _Porte des Carneaux_ (Rue Sainte-Même), _Porte des Lices_ (Marché-a-la-Filasse), _Porte de l’Évêque_ (Rue Muret). One of the handsomest of the old houses of the canons that remains is that at the corner of the Rue des Changes, facing the south porch of the Cathedral. Utilitarian France has sadly restored this old thirteenth-century house, and turned it to account as the Post Office, just as she has planted some villainous cavalry barracks on the site of the old monastic buildings of S. Père, and converted into a military bakehouse the interesting old House of Loens. Attached to the cloister was the Hospital or Hôtel-Dieu of Notre-Dame. It was founded about the tenth century; restored and spoilt in the eighteenth century. The hospital has recently been removed to a more suitable spot, and the old Hôtel-Dieu, with its thirteenth-century chapel, now serves for the École Mutuelle of the town. It stands in the south-west corner of the space which has been cleared in front of the Cathedral, between the Rue Fulbert and the Rue de la Cathédrale. [Illustration: Street Entrance to Old Hôtel de Ville]