chapter fiveThe Judicial Systems of France
and England
The systemsfor the administration of justice which developed in
France and England brought together ‘the state of the king and the
kingdom’ to create polities more unified than in Germany. The western
kingdoms, especially England, were more compact territories and easier
to administer centrally, and kings could also build on feudal relation-
ships. In Gianfranco Poggi’s words: ‘feudalism established the notion
that argument (however irrationally and violently conducted) about
rights and justice (however particularistically understood) constituted
the standard way of setting the boundaries of rule and of confronting
and correcting misrule’.^1 The strength of the French and English
monarchies rested on the strength of the communities of the lordships
and communes which they brought under their jurisdictions. In the
Capetian domains, the duchy of Normandy, and the kingdom of
England, the machinery of justice grew from appeals to the king
when justice could not be got from immediate lords. To make them
more effective, ‘private’ charters were often taken to the king for
confirmation. It was a matter for the king’s courts when grants which
he approved were infringed; all the more so, of course, when infringe-
ment was of privileges he himself had granted to churches or urban
communities.
Justice on complaint to the king of France
The Capetian kings shared with their German counterparts a strong
allegiance to the Church’s ideal of peace, but like the Norman and
Angevin kings of England they depended for the building of their state
on their skill in arbitrating between powerful feudatories and harness-
ing the energies of the towns. The bulk of the Life of Louis VI, king of
France from 1108 to 1137, written by Abbot Suger of Saint Denis, is
concerned with the military expeditions of his idol to deal with the
(^1) G. Poggi, The Development of the Modern State: A Sociological Introduction(London,
1978), 33.