ed,
and his office was promptly revived, and given in turn to Richard
Wideville, William Oldhall, and Thomas, Lord Scales. The title these
men had held as soldiers, with no idea of using it in its legal or
financial sense, Charles VII. continued, on his return to power, as a
suitable recompense for the services such favourites as de Breze had
rendered him in his campaigns, and the sounding name of Grand
Seneschal of Normandy henceforth entirely eclipsed the humbler title
of Captain of the Garrison of Rouen.

In 1457 de Breze was exercising the original functions of the office
in the Echiquier. Six years before, as the commissary of the King in
place of Dunois, he had brought before the Assembly of the Province
the vital questions of the confirmation of the Charte aux Normands, of
the installation of a special financial machinery for the Province,
and other measures necessary at the resumption of authority by the
French. Though he fell temporarily into disfavour with Louis XI., and
was obliged to consent to the marriage of his son Jacques with
Charlotte, daughter of Charles VII. and Agnes Sorel, he resumed his
post of Grand Seneschal on returning from his wars in England, and
died in office.

His son Jacques de Breze, Comte de Maulevrier, inherited the same
distinction; but having killed his wife, whose birth had shown its
unfortunate effects too soon in flagrant infidelity, he was in turn
disgraced and fined, but in turn was also reinstated. His son Louis de
Breze was given the apparently imperishable family heirloom of the
office of Grand Seneschal in August 1490, and the great seal of the
Senechaussee of Normandy was henceforth his coat of arms. More of a
soldier and a courtier than a man of law or of finance, this de Breze
left the duties of his office to a numerous staff, whose names have
been preserved in the registers of Rouen. He married first Catherine
de Dreux, "dame d'Esneval," and left his brother-in-law in charge of
the duties of his office, when he left it. During this period it was
that Cardinal d'Amboise organised the Supreme Court of the Echiquier
de Normandie (of which Antoine Bohier, Abbe of St. Ouen, was a member),
in the last years of Charles VIII., which, when the Duc d'Orleans
became Louis XII., was to blossom into the Perpetual Echiquier in the
new "Palais de Justice."

The organisation of this court did away with any practical necessity
for a Grand Seneschal, but Louis de Breze was still allo