Loyseau's life

Charles Loyseau's paternal grandfather was a husbandman of Nogent-le-Roi in the Eure valley, some thirteen kilometres southwest of Dreux. To the north of Dreux, in the same valley, lies Anet with the remains of its château which Diane de Poitiers, mistress of King Henry II, made into one of the masterpieces of French Renaissance architecture. The patronage wielded by La Grande Sénéschalle was instrumental in shaping the career of Loyseau's father, Regnauld. Trained as an advocate, he became Diane's regular legal representative when his predecessor in that role, the distinguished lawyer Christofle de Thou, was appointed through the same patroness's good offices to a senior judgeship in the Paris parlement. Regnauld Loyseau himself built a successful practice at the Paris bar, and it was probably in the capital that his son Charles was born in 1564. Diane de Poitiers stood godmother to him (Offices III.iii.45). Eclipsed in influence at court since Henry II's death in 1559, she was to die in 1567; but protégés of hers remained conspicuously in place. And with his father's own contacts to help him on his way, a brilliant future for the young Loyseau may well have been anticipated.

Such expectations were not entirely fulfilled. Doubtless Loyseau received the university education and qualifications in civil and in canon law which, as he states (Orders 8.15), were necessary for all aspiring advocates, hard though the statement is to reconcile with his later remarks on the minimum age for admission into the profession (Orders 8.44), and those remarks in turn with his own experience.