But Philip’s vast acquisitions of territory could not be treated as mere
extensions of the royal demesne lands and administered by prévôts
alone. Like every great lord, the French king had ubiquitous bailiffs, and
orders to ensure justice to churches which had been granted special pro-
tection were directed increasingly to ‘all his provosts, serjeants, and
bailiffs’, less and less to provosts alone. While the latter were burgesses
administering particular towns and their hinterlands, the ballivi domini
regiswere usually knights who worked anywhere in the domains and
often in teams, though the responsibilities given to them in the ordi-
nance of 1290 may have begun to attach them to specific bailiwicks.^32
Thus in 1191 Philip chided the bailiffs and provost of Étampes for their
denial of justice to a house of canons, telling them they had been
expressly appointed to safeguard the rights of the churches in their
ballivia.^33 Still, the first bailliagesseem to have been known by the
names of their baillis, rather than vice versa.^34
The conquests of 1204 stimulated the further growth of the bailli’s
office. Not only were there new territories to be ruled, but in
Normandy, reserved by Philip ad opus nostrum, there was the example
of ducal baillisto draw upon. From their appearance in the mid-twelfth
century these had quickly acquired importance within Henry II’s
more elaborate system of administration.^35 After the conquest, King
Philip ordered ‘all his bailiffs and provosts throughout Normandy’ to
maintain ‘within their jurisdictions’ (in potestatibus vestris) the rights of
monasteries and of the Knights Templar, as they had been enjoyed in
the times of Henry and Richard, kings of England, and to do justice on
usurers at the request of Norman bishops.^36 The extension to the French
king’s older dominions of the stringent control of Jewish activities
begun by the Angevin dukes culminated in an ordinance, addressed to
‘all the bailiffs appointed throughout France and Normandy’, which
required each township to keep a seal for the authentication of agree-
ments between Jews and Christians.^37 Similar innovations in the
Capetian domains and in Normandy reinforced each other to give the
Justice on complaint to the king of France 117(^32) Bautier, introduction to La France de Philippe Auguste, 19; Baldwin, Government of
Philip Augustus, 125–35, 428–33; ‘Chronologie des baillis et des sénéchaux royaux depuis les
origines jusqu’à l’avènement de Philippe de Valois’, in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de
la France, xxiv: Les Enquêtes Administratives du Regne de Saint Louis, ed. L. Delisle (Paris,
1904), préface and ‘preuves de la préface’, pp. 15–385; Recueil des Actes de Philippe
Auguste, i. 184.11, 194. 20 (provost alone), 562. 1 , ii. 57. 21 , 76. 16 (provosts, serjeants, and
bailiffs), 116. 18 , 178. 4 , 212.10, 294. 21 (universis baillivis suis), 384. 1 (universis amicis et
ballivis suis)etc.
(^33) Recueil des Actes de Philippe Auguste, i, no. 385.
(^34) Ibid.i. 345; Baldwin, Government of Philip Augustus,128.
(^35) C. H. Haskins, Norman Institutions(New York, 1918), 105, 151–2; Baldwin, Govern-
ment of Philip Augustus, 224–5.
(^36) Recueil des Actes de Philippe Auguste,ii, nos. 872–4.
(^37) Ibid.iii, no. 1555.