into the abuses of officials were resumed, first in Languedoc, then in
1255 in the bailliagesof Paris, Sens, and Amiens, and in subsequent
years in Berry, Touraine, the Orléannais, Rheims, and Vermandois. The
king remained constantly on the move, settling with the prelates and lay
barons the division between his powers and their rights in what W. C.
Jordan has called ‘a spirit of compromise and decency, implying no
sacrifice of legitimate prerogatives’.^7
Joinville describes how King Louis, bearing himself after his return
from Outremer‘with such devotion to Our Lord and so righteously
towards his subjects’, ‘established a general establishment’ to correct his
baillies, provosts, and mayors.^8 An immediate influence on this Grande
Ordonnanceis likely to have been the complaints to the inquisitors.
Alphonse’s commissioners of inquiry in Poitou and Toulouse were
described in the records as ‘to reform the state of the land for the
common advantage’ (statum terre ad communem utilitatem in melius
reformare);^9 Louis’s ‘general establishment’, addressed to everyone in
Languedoc and Languedoil, proclaimed itself to be made ‘out of the
obligation of royal power’ to defend the peace and quiet of his subjects
against the injuries of the wicked, and (again) ‘to reform the state of the
kingdom for the better’. That further legislation was envisaged is shown
by the last clause of the edict, which reserved to the ‘fullness of royal
power’ the ‘declaration, alteration, and also correction, supplementa-
tion, or diminution of all the things said above’; and almost immediately
provisions were added to what Louis said he had previously ordained
‘for the reformation of the state of our lands’.^10
The state to be reformed by this newly self-conscious legislation was
the administration of the kingdom by the king’s local agents. The com-
munal oath to keep the peace was replaced by an oath required of the
baillies, seneschals, and other officials ‘of the [king’s] court’ to safe-
guard the rights of both king and people. The king himself undertook
to punish baillies who defaulted on their sworn obligations, the baillies
to punish miscreant provosts and mayors; if they failed, the shame of
perjury would fall on all of them equally, since the oaths were to be
taken ‘in public assizes, before both clergy and laity’ (cc. 1, 10, 11). At
the end of his term of office every royal bailiff, great or small, must
remain in his bailiwick for forty days to answer complainants in front
Complaints against officials 149(^7) Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, 223 (§667); cf. Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed.
H. R. Luard, vol. v (London: Rolls Series, 1880), 465; Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of
the Crusade, ch. 6.
(^8) Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, 229–33 (§693–§719); Ordonnances des Roys de France, i.
65–81; L. Carolus-Barré, ‘La Grande Ordonnance de 1254 sur la réforme de l’administration
et la police du royaume’, in Septième centenaire de la mort de saint Louis(Paris, 1976), 91.
(^9) Layettes du Trésor des chartes,iv, nos. 4174–5.
(^10) Carolus-Barré, ‘La Grande Ordonnance’, 91–3.