When the Jews were expelled from Normandy, in 1181, the _Close_, or
Jewry, in which they dwelled, escheated to the king. The sons of Japhet
spoiled the sons of Shem with pious alacrity. The debtor burnt his bond;
the bailie seized the store of bezants; the synagogue was razed to the
ground. In this _Close_ the palace was afterwards built. The wise custom
of Normandy was mooted on the spot where the law of Moses had once been
taught; and, by a strange, perhaps an ominous, fatality, the judge held
the scales of justice, where whilome the usurer had poised his balance.
The palace forms three sides of a quadrangle. The fourth is occupied by
an embattled wall and an elaborate gate-way. The building was erected
about the beginning of the sixteenth century; and, with all its faults,
it is a fine adaptation of Gothic architecture to civil purposes. It is
in the style which a friend of mine chooses to distinguish by the name
of _Burgundian architecture_; and he tells me that he considers it as
the parent of our Tudor style.
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