striking debt, that to my illustrators; not only to my mother,
who drew the arms of Rouen, from a design of 1550, for the first
chapter, and Coustou's charming bas-relief of Commerce for the last,
but more especially to Miss James; of her work I need say nothing; it
is quite able to make its own appeal; but for her indefatigable desire
to draw exactly what I wanted and to assist the whole scheme of the
book I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude. Her drawings of the
Crypte St. Gervais, of the Chapelle St. Julien, and of the Eglise St.
Paul, will be as new as they are valuable to architectural readers;
her picture of the Cour des Comptes, and of the old house in the Rue
St. Romain were made under exceptional circumstances which may never
recur again; and the view of the Chartreuse de la Rose is the first
representation of the headquarters of our Henry V. in France which has
ever, to my knowledge, been produced in England.

In conclusion I must express the earnest wish that the pages I have
written about the carvings of the Maison Bourgtheroulde, and the
illustrations accompanying them, will not have been published in vain.
That the only authentic contemporaneous record of the Field of the
Cloth of Gold, except the one picture at Hampton Court, should now be
mouldering into decay in a French town is hardly creditable to those
who can act with authority in valuable questions of historical art. If
it be impossible to procure any good reproduction of these carvings
for the pleasure and instruction of the public in our own National
Galleries, a suggestion might at least be made that would secure their
better preservation in the French house which they will soon cease to
adorn.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
PAGE
_Introductory_ 1

CHAPTER II

_The First City_ 12

CHAPTER III

_Merovingian Rouen_ 24

CHAPTER IV

_Rouen under her own Dukes_ 44

CHAPTER V

_The Conquest of England and the Fall of Normandy_ 72

CHAPTER VI

_A French Town_ 103

CHAPTER VII

_La Rue de la Grosse Horloge_ 134

CHAPTER VIII

_The Siege of Rouen by Henry V._ 169

CHAPTER