victories of Crecy and Poitiers’ in France, the English no longer hold a
tenth of either kingdom.^59
So, via the county of Flanders, the party comes at last to Paris and an
examination of the money of France and how it needs to be reformed,
which takes up the second book of the Dream. De Mézière’s polity, like
Oresme’s but with much greater complexity, is analysed as a collection
of estates possessing a variety of roles. To await Queen Truth’s judg-
ment, the ‘three estates general’ (meaning the whole people) of the Île de
France, Picardy, Champagne, Normandy, Poitou, Guienne, and the
other provinces are arranged into four orders, each a threefold ‘hier-
archy’. The first (clerical) hierarchy is thus composed of prelates, parish
clergy, and members of religious orders; the second consists of king and
princes, knights and gentlemen, and military officers; the third is a pro-
fessional group of parlementairesand judges, advocates and notaries,
and financial officers; and the fourth lumps together the commercial
aristocracy, master craftsmen and workmen.^60
A new and striking image of political society is introduced in book 2:
France becomes a great ship called Gracieuse. Before its appearance a
member of the fourth hierarchy has already confessed and lamented the
rebellion of the common people against their natural lords which was
provoked by the ‘piteous tragedy’ of war; and Hardiessefrom the third
hierarchy, one of Queen Truth’s chamberlains, has singled out for ‘a
long and horrible narration’ the greed and presumption of financial
officials which have made humbly-born treasurers of war ‘of greater
estate’ than a duke of the realm. For ‘the common good of the king and
his people’ their ‘outrageous numbers’ and the ‘multitudes of books and
papers of account of the realm of France’ should be cut down to the
levels of Venice, where one man is elected to govern ‘the exchange called
the bank of the commune’ and can show ‘the whole state of the city’ on
one piece of paper. The numbers of judges and officers of parlementare
likewise too great—it would be better to use panels of unpaid arbiters
chosen from the three estates, as in Milan.^61
It was a more perilous matter to criticize the second, seigneurial or
ruling, hierarchy, especially at the highest level of king, princes, and
barons of the realm. The ship of France is introduced to give these lords
a true sense of their estate and the dignity of their office. It is sailing to
Jerusalem to buy the true elixir of life and the philosophers’ stone, under
a master who is a merchant-prince named ‘Christian’ and officers who
The king in the French body politic 275(^59) Philippe de Mézières, Chancellor of Cyprus, Le Songe du Vieil Pèlerin, ed. G. W. Coop-
land, 2 vols. (Cambridge UP, 1969), i. 29–34, 38, 32–3, 117–89, 239, 371, 375, 394–400;
ibid.i. 106–14 for Philippe’s list of all the allegorical figures in the work; Krynen, L’Empire
du roi, 195–8.
(^60) Le Songe du Vieil Pèlerin, i. 38–41, 409–41, 446–8,
(^61) Ibid.i. 455, 458, 462, 474–80, 492, 503.