This exchange was regarded as so great a subject of
triumph to the archbishop, that he caused the memory of it to be
perpetuated by inscriptions upon crosses in various parts of Rouen, some
of which remained as late as 1610, when Taillepied wrote his _Recueil
des Antiquitez et Singularitez de la Ville de Rouen_. The following
lines are given as one of these inscriptions in the _Gallia
Christiana_[10]:
"Vicisti, Galtere, tui sunt signa triumphi
Deppa, Locoveris, Alacris-mons, Butila, molta,
Deppa maris portus, Alacris-mons locus amoenus,
Villa Locoveris, rus Butila, molta per urbem.
Hactenus haec Regis Richardi jura fuere;
Haec rex sancivit, haec papa, tibique tuere[11]."
Nor was this the only memorial of the fact; for the advantages of the
exchange were so generally recognized, that the name of Walter became
proverbial; and to this day it is said in Normandy of a man who
over-reaches another, "c'est un fin Gautier." It might be inferred from
the terms of the bargain in which Dieppe merely appears as one of the
items of the account, that it was then a place of little consequence;
yet, one of the old chroniclers speaks of it at the time it was taken by
the French under Philip Augustus, as
"portus fama celeberrimus atque
Villa potens opibus.
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