With this last crime that part of the Merovingian tragedy with which Rouen is connected comes to a close. Nor have I space here to follow out the actors to the curtain's fall. In other pages their various fortunes and their dark calamities may be followed to a conclusion. The next chapter in the history of the town is that of the Northmen, and of the founding of that mighty dynasty which was to spread its rule across the Channel, and to gather the towns of England under the same sceptre that swayed the citizens of Rouen. But before the coming of the Northmen, there are a few more slight facts that I must chronicle if only to explain the desert and the ruins that alone were Rouen when the first pirate galley swept up to the quay and anchored close to where the western door of the Cathedral now looks out across the Parvis. The monk Fridegode relates that it was in 533 that the first stones of what was afterwards to be the famous Abbey of St. Ouen[5] were laid by the first Hlothair. Others say that a church founded nearly two centuries before was restored by the son of Hlotild the holy Queen and dedicated first to the Holy Apostles, and then to St. Peter and St. Paul. Its name was changed to the one it bears now in 686 when the body of St. Ouen was moved there on Ascension Day three years after his death. But not a trace of the original church remains, and most probably it was built almost entirely of wood, like that shrine of St. Martin in which Brunhilda and her young husband fled for sanctuary in about the year 580. In this same century we first hear too of that legendary Kingdom of Yvetot, whose lord was freed from all service to the Royal House of France by the penitence of King Hlothair. Its history is chiefly confined to the airy fantasies of poets, and is completely justified of its existence by Beranger's verses: "Il etait un roi d'Yvetot Peu connu dans l'histoire Se levant tard se couchant tot Dormant fort bien sans gloire Et couronne par Jeanneton D'un simple bonnet de coton," which may very well serve as the epitome and epitaph of a lazy independence that needed no more serious chronicler.[6] [Footnote 5: "In manu gothica," he says, with a phrase that was to produce a very pretty quarrel later on.] [Footnote 6: This jovial monarch is mentioned in a legal decree of 1392. He retires into obscurity during the English Occupation, and is restored, curiously enough, by the sombre Louis XI. in 1461, and freed from all taxes and subsidies. At the entry of Charles VIII. in 1485 (see Chap. X.) he makes a very appropriate appearance. In 1543 Francois Premier mentions a "Reine d'Yvetot." In 1610 Martin du Bellay, Sieur de Langey and Lieutenant General of Normandy, was hailed as "Mon petit roi d'Yvetot" by Henri Quatre at the coronation of Marie de Medicis. In 1783 the last "documentary" evidence occurs in the inscription on two boundary-stones: "Franchise de la Principaute d'Yvetot."]