Medieval Law and the Foundations of the State

‘the Estate of King’ because of his ‘defaults in governance’. The Commons in parliament could nevertheless protest to the new ki ...

Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris and leading pro- ponent of reform in the estates-general, French kings never t ...

wider class of property-holders), and the multitude tend to overlap, and the whole is best represented by a middle class of admi ...

purposes than they could authorize him to misuse their wives. The prince as ‘the most public person’ minted money for the commun ...

victories of Crecy and Poitiers’ in France, the English no longer hold a tenth of either kingdom.^59 So, via the county of Fland ...

are like him in their disciplined living and estate; there is no vanity or extravagance at the court of this prince, and he is a ...

persons equal in estate and dignity’, after open and honest discussion in council. De Mézières continues the emphasis of French ...

notion of the crown seems to converge with that of the chose publique (an exact translation of res publica, the public ‘thing’ o ...

of the earliest society, that they should choose a prince to settle disputes and punish crimes, and to ‘divide his people into d ...

should be chosen from fourgroups of estates (manières d’estas): from the nobles, firstly experienced captains to advise on the w ...

equally distributed through the mystical body. On one occasion Gerson tells the king that the knights (here called the first est ...

Terre Rouge might almost have been anticipating how events would shortly turn out. The killing of Duke John the Fearless in 1419 ...

overriding responsibility for the public good. The king, Terre Rouge repeats, exercises administrationes publicae, regimina publ ...

The League’s first aim, according to Basin, had been to compel the king to assemble the three estates in his capital to assent t ...

one deputy (or in populous Vermandois and the prévôtéof Paris, two deputies) from each estate, who should carry to the estates g ...

the king ‘for the state of his household and family’, by the depredations of men-at-arms, and by the number of officers and pens ...

holders the government contributed to the complexity of society already evident in Philippe de Mézières’ scheme of orders and es ...

In 1515, French society could be understood as conforming to the secular pattern of society recognized in Italy, in which the es ...

of ordinances required that the customary law of the different parts of France be written down and published, so that (as the ca ...

especially sensitive, or in the national interest’, and to take the initiative in changing the law.^90 The first printed collect ...