Note 47 — Chapter IX · Jeanne d'Arc and the English Occupation

In 1431 another prisoner, Souplis Lemire, of Yvetôt, was pardoned for exactly the same crime. By a lie he induced Jehanne Corvière to mount behind his horse, rode with her into a country lane, where in the words of the manuscript, "il la féry et frapa de plusieurs orbes coups, plus de l'espace de quatre heures, et lui fist la char toute noire et meudrie en plusieurs parties de son corps, et tant fist que il oult violemment et oultre le gré d'elle sa compaignie par grant force et à plusieurs clameurs de haro." In this case it was evidently the influence of the offender's family which procured him the Fierte, and his victim raised the "clameur de haro" during the ceremony itself. For this she was obliged to apologise to the canons, but Lemire's conduct throughout had been so disgraceful that, though the Fierte had absolved him definitely of all criminal penalty, after eight years of discussion he was condemned in the civil courts to pay damages of 250 livres tournois to Jehanne. In 1540 the same principle was upheld, and it generally seems to have been the custom that any prisoner chosen should give surety for the payment of his civil penalties before he was released by the Fierte from his criminal sentence.