The vital importance of urban wealth to governments compelled the
admission of burgesses to the political process. Their representatives
were included with those of the knights of the shires in the English
parliament, while in France they were called to political assemblies as
the lowest of ‘the three estates’, which were listed in 1355 as ‘Arch-
bishops, Bishops, Abbots and Chapters, Nobles of our blood and other
Dukes, Counts, Barons, Knights and others, and also [representatives
of] the Burgesses and inhabitants of Cities, Castles and large towns’.^189
This political categorization belied the social divisions within the urban
population, which Beaumanoir emphasized in his advice to every lord
of a town to inform himself each year of ‘l’estat de la vile’ and how it
was governed by its mayor and officers. Beaumanoir was especially
anxious about the frictions appearing between the richer townsmen
who exercised power and the middling and poor people who had no
part in government but bore the burden of taxes.^190 In 1354 the king of
France was intent on discovering the ‘Estates and Governments’ of
towns in a rather different sense from Beaumanoir’s, that is to say the
varying economic regimes of Paris and ‘other places’, which required
different levels of wages and prices to be set ‘pour tout le bon estat de
la chose publique’.^191
Town populations showed how heterogeneous society was: lay lords
and clergy were no more homogeneous groups than the burgesses, and
later medieval governments learnt to control them all by defining levels
of personal status rather than by feudal monarchy’s granting of terri-
torial liberties. This went so far as to regulate the dress and diet of each
rank of the social hierarchy. In the reign of Philip IV, which seems to
mark a new stage of economic and social regulation, it was ordained
that no bourgoisnor bourgoiseshould wear fur or finery of gold, silver,
or precious stones; and a clerk who was not a prelate or established
dignitary should have fur only on his hood. Naturally the lower orders
had to be stopped from aping their betters, but remarkably the ordi-
nance went on to limit dukes, counts, and barons with six thousand
pounds-worth of land, and their wives also, to four new robes each a
year; knights, prelates, and esquires to two robes, except that a banneret
or a knight with three thousand pounds-worth of land might have an
extra suit for summer wear; and grooms to one set of robes, along with
ladies who were not mistresses of castles or in possession of two
thousand pounds-worth of land. The prices of the robes permitted to
each rank and those which lords might give their retainers were
Estates of people 229(^189) Ordonnances des Roys de France, iii. 21, 173.
(^190) Coutumes de Beauvaisis, ii. 266–75 (cap. 50, §1516–32); for cases in which the king
showed concern for the status villeof Ghent and of Rouen, see Les Olim, ii. 174 (ix), 326–7
(x), 356–7 (xiv).
(^191) Ordonnances des Roys de France, ii. 564–6.