&c. This ordinance is general, and for the whole extent of the king's domains.

The second is conceived in the following terms:

"It is ordered, by the council of the lord king, that the dukes, counts, barons, archbishops, bishops, abbots, chapters, colleges, knights, and all those in general who possess the temporal jurisdiction in the kingdom of France, shall institute and exercise the said jurisdiction, a bailiff, a provost, and lay-serjeants, not clerks-to the end, that if the said officers should happen to fail, their superiors may proceed against them, and if there be any clerks in the said offices let them be dismissed.

"It has likewise been ordered that all those who have, or shall have, after the present parliament, a cause before the court of the king and the secular judges of the kingdom of France, nominate lay attorneys. Nevertheless, chapters may name attorneys from among their canons, and the abbots and convents from among their monks."

Assuredly, to exclude every ecclesiastic from every kind of judicial function, and not only in the courts of the king, but in those of the lords, and wherever any temporal jurisdiction whatever existed is one of the most important and the most energetic acts of power which could then be accomplished.

In 1288, two ordinances: the one upon private interests; the other forbids any religious person, of whatever order he may be, to imprison a Jew, without informing the lay judge of the place to which the Jew is taken.

The one

In 1289, an ordinance concerning private interests. In 1290, six ordinances: I shall speak of two. takes from the Templars the privileges of their order, whenever they do not wear the habit. This is one of the first symptoms of the ill-will of Philip towards the Templars. The other grants various privileges to ecclesiastics, especially to bishops; among others that the causes of the latter shall always be carried before parliament, never before the inferior jurisdiction.

In 1291, four ordinances. The most important contains, in eleven articles, the first precise organization of the parlia ment of Paris. The king orders the formation of a special chamber for the examination of requisitions, points out what

persons shall possess seats there, upon what days they shall meet, how they shall proceed, &c. Another ordinance contains dispositions favourable to the clergy, with regard to domains acquired by churches.

In 1292, four unimportant ordinances: the last is a fragment of an ordinance concerning fishing, which contains singularly minute provisions. There is no certainty of its belonging to Philip le Bel.

In 1293, two without importance.

In 1294, three, one of which is a sumptuary ordinance to which I shall soon return.

In 1295, four. The principal one grants privileges to Italian merchants, in consideration of a duty upon their merchandise.

In 1296, six, of which the first is an ordinance to interdict private wars and judicial combats during the war of the king in Flanders.

2. The king secures to the duke of Brittany the maintenance of his rights in matters of citation before the court of the king. 3. A detailed confirmation of a regulation upon the salt mines of Carcassonne.

In 1297, three. One establishes free commerce between France and Hainault, so long as the alliance of the two princes shall last.

In 1298, three.

The king orders the duke of Burgundy to forbid foreign money.

In 1299, four. The king forbids the bailiffs of Touraine and Maine to trouble the ecclesiastics within their jurisdiction. He prescribes measures against the robbers of game and

fish.

In 1300, two.

He reduces the number of the notaries to the chatelet to sixty.

He declares clerks punishable, even when absolved in the ecclesiastical court, if the crime be evident.

In 1301, four.

He orders the provost of Paris to cause

the execution of his ordinance as to the number of notaries to the chatelet, and regulates their functions.

He regulates the succession of bastards who die in the domains of the lord.

1. He limits the powers of the se

In 1302, seventeen. neschals over the churches of Languedoc.

2. He represses the seneschals who, under the pretext of private wars, invade the jurisdiction of the lords, especially of the archbishop of Narbonne, in all cases of public dispute and troubles.

3. He exempts men who are very poor from military service for the army of Flanders.

4. He appropriates to himself the plate of his bailiffs, and partially that of his subjects, on condition of a future and incomplete reimbursement.

5. He confiscates the domains of bishops, abbots, &c., who leave his kingdom in spite of his prohibition.

6. He levies a subsidy for the war in Flanders upon his cubjects whether noble or not. He forbids the lords to levy any upon those of their men whom he has exempted

7. He forbids the exportation of corn, wine, and other provisions.

8. He regulates the number and the functions of the various officers of the chatelet.

9. A grand ordinance for the reformation of the kingdom. He regulates the functions and duties of seneschals, bailiffs, sergeants, &c.

For the advantage of our subjects, and for the despatch of causes, we shall every year hold two parliaments at Paris, two courts of exchequer at Rouen, and twice a year two days' court at Troyes. There shall be a parliament at Toulouse, if the people of that province consent that there be not appeal from the presidents of that parliament."

10. He levies a subsidy for the war in Flanders, exempting all those who pay it from various other charges. He gives an instruction to his commissaries which ends with these remarkable words:

"And do not raise these finances in the lands of the barons against their will; and keep this ordinance secret, even the article about the lands of the barons, for it would be great injury to us if they knew of it. And by every conciliatory means that you can bring them to consent; such as you shall find opposed to it, write to us forthwith their names that we may take counsel how to make them withdraw their opposition. Be careful to give them fair and courteous words, and let no unseemly disputes arise."

I must desist; it were easy for me in this way to analyse

the 354 ordinances of Philip le Bel; but those cited are suffi cient to show you to what various subjects royalty applied itself under his reign, and what the progress of its intervention was in almost all things. A last example will show you to what a point of minuteness this intervention was carried; I extract it from that sumptuary ordinance of 1294, which I just spoke of. We there read:

"1. No woman citizen shall keep a car.

"2. No citizen, male or female, shall wear fur, grey or ermine, and they shall discontinue such as they now have within a year from next Easter. They shall not wear any ornaments of gold, nor precious stones, nor gold nor silver fillets.

4. A duke, count, or baron of six thousand livres a year and upwards from land may have four suits a year and no Their ladies as many and no more.

more.

"8. A knight or baronet with three thousand livres and upwards from land may have three suits a year and no more, and one of them shall be a summer suit.

66

"11. Boys shall have only one suit a year.

"14. No one shall have more at dinner than two dishes and a potage au lard. And at supper one dish and a oydish; and if it be fast day, two dishes of herrings and soud and two other dishes, or three dishes and one soup, and each dish shall only consist of one piece of meat, or one sort of

soup:

15. It is ordered, in further declaration of the rule touching dress, that no prelates or barons, however high in rank, shall wear a suit of more than twenty-five sols Tournois the Paris ell.

"And these ordinances, &c., are commanded to be kept by the dukes, counts, barons, prelates, priests, and by all manner of people whatsoever of this kingdom under our faith. Whatever duke, count, baron, or prelate shall do anything against this ordinance, shall be fined 100 livres Tournois for each offence. And they are bound to have this establishment observed by their subjects of whatever rank, and to fine any banneret who acts in disobedience thereto fifty livres Tournois, and any knight or vavasour twentyfive livres Tournois. The informer to have one-third of the penalty." 1

In 1294. Recueil des Ordonnances, t. i. p. 541-543.

We have hitherto met with nothing resembling this in acts of French royalty. This is the first time we observe the appearance of that claim to mix itself with all things, that regulation mania which has played so great a part in the administration of France. Its rapid development is more especially attributable to two causes, to the double circumstance that power was exercised both by ecclesiastics and by jurisconsults. It is the constant tendency of ecclesiastics to consider legislation under a moral point of view, to desire to make morality thoroughly pervade the laws. Now in morality, and particularly in theological morality, there is no action in life indifferent; the slightest details of human activity are morally good or evil, and should consequently be authorised or interdicted. As instruments or counsellors of the royal power, the ecclesiastics were governed by this idea, and endeavoured to introduce into penal legislation all the foresight, all the distinctions, all the prescrip. tions of theological discipline or casuistry. The jurisconsults, from a different cause, acted with the same tendency. What predominates in the jurisconsults is the custom of pushing a principle to its last consequences; subtleness, logical vigour, the art of following a fundamental axiom in its application to numerous different causes without losing its thread, such is the essential character of the legist spirit; and the Roman jurisconsults are the most striking examples of this. Hardly then had royalty given to the lawyers, its chief instruments, a principle to apply, than by that natural tendency of their profession they laboured to develop that principle, and each day to draw new consequences from it, and thus to make the royal power penetrate into a multitude of affairs and details of life, to which, naturally, it would have remained a stranger.

Such is the character which this power began to take under the reign of Philip le Bel. Although he had excluded them from the judicial order, the ecclesiastics still enjoyed a large share in his government, and the jurisconsults daily played a larger part in it. Now both of these classes, from different causes, exercised an analogous influence over royalty, and impelled it in the same direction.

What is no less remarkable is, that the greater portion of these ordinances emanate from the king alone, without mcn

VOL. III.