his back against an oak tree in the wood of Vincennes, gathering his
councillors around them, and hearing ‘the Pleas of the gate’ (de la Porte)
which ‘are now [that is, early in the fourteenth century] called the
Requests’. Anyone with a case in hand could present it to the king with-
out hindrance by ushers or others, and he would detail one of his court
to look into it.^47
The king was going far beyond his traditional jurisdiction as feudal
suzerain. The queen’s confessor describes the trial of Enguerrand de
Coucy, of so great and ancient a family that his sister could marry
Alexander II king of Scots, who had hanged three boys for poaching on
his land, without legal process (so their relatives complained) and though
they had with them no dogs or equipment for catching wild animals.
Louis shocked the nobility when, after ‘sufficient inquiry’, he sent his
knights and serjeants to imprison de Coucy at the Louvre. The magnates
declared that de Coucy should not and would not be subjected to an
inquest in a matter touching his person, honour, and heritage, but
would defend himself by battle. The king replied that in cases concern-
ing the poor, churches, and people otherwise deserving of pity, ‘the law
of battle’ did not apply; once he understood God’s will in the case,
neither nobility of lineage nor the power of the accused’s friends would
prevent him from doing justice. With the advice of his councillors he
then sentenced de Coucy to forfeit the high justice which he had abused,
along with the land on which he had offended, and ordered him to pay
a ten thousand pound fine, create three chantries for the souls of the
hanged boys, and go on a crusade. The king treated the defence of
Enguerrand de Coucy as a conspiracy against the realm. He denied that
he would hang barons, as the word was going round, but he would not
hesitate to punish them if they did wrong, including his own brother
Charles, count of Anjou and the eventual king of Sicily, if he gave bad
justice and failed to pay his debts to merchants, for there could be only
one king in France.^48
Inquests were ordered to remove cases from seignorial courts where
the local influence of the parties was too unequal to allow justice to be
done, and the count of Joigny was brought before the king ‘in a full
parlement’ (en un plein parlement) and sent to the Châtelet prison when
he allowed a burgess he had caught thieving to die in his custody before
due process.^49 Originally just a word for a notable assembly or ‘parley’,
especially of king and barons, parlementwas taken over as the name
of the newly professional law-court which complaints to the king
162 New High Courts and Reform of the Regime
(^47) Joinville, Vie de Saint Louis, 94–5 (§57–§59); Q. Griffiths, ‘New Men among the Lay
Counselors of Saint Louis’, Medieval Studies, 32 (1970), 240–1.
(^48) Recueil des historiens, 20, pp. 113–15; Richard, Saint Louis, 212–14.
(^49) Recueil des historiens, 20, p. 118C.