This king of Navarre, then, had many mighty strongholds in Normandy; but the animosity and war were so intense that many castles, strong and well-positioned though they were, were levelled to the ground, for they were thorns in the side of France. And father was at war with son and brother with brother, kin against kin. Both sides pillaged the land around Rouen, and there were so many English allied with the Navarrese that no one dared venture abroad without safe-conduct.

A prominent knight in those parts, a particular bane of the realm of France, was the one known as the Captal de Buch. He and the Bascon de Mareuil, a bold fighter, supported by Pierre de Sacquenville and John Jewell (a vain, proud man), roamed the area around the handsome city of Évreux and Pont-Audemer with its great castle, and Cherbourg on the coast – in fact more than thirty places – and beyond Rouen and on towards Paris as far as Mantes and Meulan and the tower of Rolleboise on the banks of the Seine. The castellan at Rolleboise was a base and wicked man who waged fierce war along the Seine; between the illustrious city of Paris and the city of Rouen neither Frenchman nor Norman could travel in safety: it was a great vexation to the citizens and merchants – the garrison at Rolleboise caused them no end of harm.

And all this while France was without a king: by terrible misfortune he was stuck in England, and the duke of Normandy, as regent, suffered more trials and tribulations than mortal man can say. The English held sway as far as Picardy, and occupied the whole region around Beauvais. There was a strong English force at the mill at Leseut and at the fine castle of La Herelle, and Creil with its splendid town and fortress was full of them.

The fact is, sirs, that at this time the kingdom was riven by dreadful conflict and bitter and destructive war between those who should by right and in all reason have lived in loving harmony: brothers, friends, companions. It was the work and the wile of the Devil, ever devoted to evil, his sole intent.