een employed by Francois I. in the negotiation of the
celebrated Concordat which that king announced with so much solemnity
on his entry into Rouen in 1517.

[Footnote 65: Called Le Roux d'Esneval in a genealogy of 1689, and
perhaps relations of Louis de Breze's first wife, whom he married
before Diane de Poitiers. See the end of Chapter X.]

These two last facts may largely account for the decoration of the new
wing the Abbe built in Rouen, and the carvings he added to the older
walls; for they are mainly suggested by one of the most magnificent
occurrences in the ostentatious reign of a king whose visit to the
town had no doubt enhanced the importance of the Abbe in the eyes of
his fellow-citizens. At any rate he was not likely to let them forget
that the Francois whom he had helped in the matter of the Concordat
was also the hero of the "Champ du Drap d'Or." Though the house may
have been begun as early as 1486, when the second Guillaume Le Roux
was married, it was not finished for some time afterwards, and we may
put 1531 as the latest date, because the Phoenix of Eleanor of
Austria shows beside the Salamander of her husband. Abbe Guillaume
died in 1532, before which year the carvings must have been completed,
and they evidently cannot have been begun before 1520, the date of the
Field of the Cloth of Gold, which was their chief inspiration, so that
the carvings certainly have the value of almost contemporaneous
workmanship, and most probably the authority, either directly or
indirectly, of an eye-witness. It may be as well to remember that to
that gorgeous ceremony there was no possibility of any mere loafer, or
any wandering unauthorised artist being admitted, because it is on
record that everyone without a special permit was cleared out of the
country in a circle of some four leagues; and it is not too much to
imagine that even if one who had had a hand in the important
negotiations of the Concordat four years before were not in the King's
suite, he was at least in a position to see and profit by the work of
the artists who accompanied Francois,[66] to record his splendours and
to make the best use of all their opportunities.

[Footnote 66: There were, of course, men to do the same kind office
for Henry VIII. In the Hampton Court Gallery, see No. 342, and the
notes in Mr Ernest Law's catalogue.]

Since 1820 the Maison Bourgtheroulde has practically been a unique
example of the style of decoration for which it