Hubertine replied that Monseigneur must belong to the younger branch of
the family, as the elder branch had been extinct for a very long time.
It was, indeed, a most singular return, as for centuries the Marquesses
of Hautecoeur and the clergy of Beaumont had been hostile to each
other. Towards 1150 an abbot undertook to build a church, with no other
resources than those of his Order; so his funds soon gave out, when the
edifice was no higher than the arches of the side chapels, and they were
obliged to cover the nave with a wooden roof. Eighty years passed, and
Jean V came to rebuild the Chateau, when he gave three hundred thousand
pounds, which, added to other sums, enabled the work on the church to be
continued. The nave was finished, but the two towers and the great front
were terminated much later, towards 1430, in the full fifteenth century.
To recompense Jean V for his liberality, the clergy accorded to him,
for himself and his descendants, the right of burial in a chapel of the
apse, consecrated to St. George, and which, since that time, had been
called the Chapel Hautecoeur. But these good terms were not of long
duration. The freedom of Beaumont was put in constant peril by the
Chateau, and there were continual hostilities on the questions of
tribute and of precedence. One especially, the right of paying toll,
which the nobles demanded for the navigation of the Ligneul, perpetuated
the quarrels. Then it was that the great prosperity of the lower town
began, with its manufacturing of fine linen and lace, and from this
epoch the fortune of Beaumont increased daily, while that of Hautecoeur
diminished, until the time when the castle was dismantled and the church
triumphed. Louis XIV made of it a cathedral, a bishop's palace was
built in the old enclosure of the monks, and, by a singular chain of
circumstances, to-day a member of the family of Hautecoeur had returned
as a bishop to command the clergy, who, always powerful, had conquered
his ancestors, after a contest of four hundred years.