holders the government contributed to the complexity of society already
evident in Philippe de Mézières’ scheme of orders and estates, but also
lessened anxiety about the maintenance of ‘degree’: hierarchy was
divinely ordained, but it was always possible to rise through royal
service, which acquired infinite gradations. Even among the old nobility
the king exchanged the loyalty of feudal vassals for the military compe-
tence of subjects. In 1484 l’estat de noblesseasked and was granted that
nobles should be paid when they were called to arms, ‘each reasonably,
according to his estate’, but the request that they, rather than baillisand
sénéchals, should lead detachments was refused. In 1537, Francis I
appointed the dauphin Henri to the ‘estate’ of governor of Normandy,
and in 1537 he provided Anne de Montmorency to l’estat et officeof
constable of France, as a man experienced in war and zeal for the affairs
of the king, his realm, and the chose publique.^83
Among the civil servants, lawyers, and urban elite a new caste was
created, leading into another nobility ‘of the robe’. The group ‘privileges
and exemptions’ now most prominently granted and confirmed by royal
ordinances were those of the ‘clerks and secretaries of the king, house
and crown of France’. In 1482, Louis likened his re-establishment of his
clerks as a fifty-nine strong collegiate body (en l’estat et communauté de
corps et collège), with himself as head and sixtieth member, to the
action of Christ, King and Prince of Kings, in appointing ‘the glorious
evangelists’ to record his commandments and works ‘by solemn writing
and attestation’, and to the papacy’s appointment of prothonotaries
to register the deeds of the martyrs and the decrees of the church. In
the same way his predecessors had appointed clerks to register the
things established by the kings of France: laws, constitutions, pragmatic
sanctions, edicts, ordinances, consultations, charters, gifts, privileges,
provisions of justice or of grace, the judgments of the courts of parle-
mentand other courts of sovereign authority and jurisdiction, and
generally all letters touching the king’s most weighty, special, and secret
affairs. Because of the great profit and utility they provided ‘to the
whole state of the commonwealth, in the doing of justice and other-
wise’, Louis’s clerks and secretaries were to be raised to particular
‘privileges, estates, dignities and prerogatives’ above those of other
officials, enjoying security of office for life and not requiring new
commissions when there was a new king—though Charles VIII did
promptly confirm this anoblissementon his accession.^84
France as l’état monarchique 287(^83) Masselin, Journal, 643, 647; Ordonnances des Roys de France: Règne de Francois I, viii.
1536–7 (Paris, 1963), 99–101, 203–8; Ibid. ix: 1538–9 (Paris, 1973–5), 40–5; Lewis, Later
Medieval France, 167–9, 185, 220 ff.; Essays in Later Medieval French History, 12 ff.;
B. Guenée, States and Rulers in Later Medieval Europe, tr. J. Vale (Oxford, 1985), 158–60.
(^84) Ordonnances des Roys de France, xix. 62–79, 473–5; Ordonnances des Rois de France:
Règne de Francois I, viii. 22–6, ix. 207; Lewis, Later Medieval France, 177–83.