sénéchausséesanswerable to Paris had spread across the whole country,
parlementsettling administrative boundary disputes, as it did in 1255
on the complaint of the men of the bailliagesof Orleans and Bourges
that they were being summoned from one into the other.^70 No doubt
because the operation of the court-system depended on them and they
appeared in parlementto answer for their actions, in 1303 sénéchaux
and bailliswere excluded from sitting as magistriduring their terms of
office.^71 Many of the orders they received concerned justice in a narrow
sense. Parlementmight reverse their judgments, but commissioned them
to take the executive action on which justice depended. A bailliwas to
see that a prior who had imprisoned a man for appealing from his
seignorial court to a parlementreversed his judgment and paid damages,
‘so that the matter does not come back to us through your neglect’.
Bailliswere to destroy an unlicensed warren made by the count of Blois,
and to see that the count of Bar, who had defaulted on an undertaking
to pay an abbot two thousand pounds damages a year for five years
came before the king at Paris, ‘on your bailliage’s day in the next parle-
ment’.^72 An ordinance required baillisto proclaim twice at each assize
that anyone having a case in parlementshould appear on the first or
second of the days set aside for their bailliagesor sénéchaussées, or be
held in default.^73
Parlementwas an instrument for the integration of the state of France
politically as well as judicially. The establishment at Bordeaux, after its
conquest in 1451, of Grands Jourswhich were soon recognized as a
parlement, marked the final incorporation into the French kingdom of
a region long the possession of the kings of England.^74 In fact from the
time of the treaty of 1259 which allowed them to keep Gascony as
vassals of France, English kings had been obliged to maintain proctors
at Paris to plead their cases at parlements, and like the counts of
Flanders or the dukes of Burgundy they were sent rolls of arrêtsaffect-
ing their interests, which are preserved in the English chancery
records.^75 The ambition of Charles of Anjou to succeed to his brother
Alphonse’s apanage was ended by a decision of parlementin 1284, and
in 1294 Philip IV obtained a judgment that Edward I had forfeited
Gascony by his failure to appear in parlement.^76 French kings became
accustomed to consult parlement before making treaties. Within the
168 New High Courts and Reform of the Regime
(^70) Les Olim,i. 436 (xi)
(^71) Langlois, Textes, 173 (cxxi).
(^72) Ibid. 183 (cxxvi); Recueil des historiens, vol. 24, ‘preuves’, 363–364 (no. 251); Les
Olim, ii. 100 (ix), 117 (xxviii), 138 (xxx), 278 (xv), 312 (vii), 315 (xiii), 355 (x), 496–7 (viii),
594 (vi).^73 Langlois, Textes, 183–9 (cxxvi, c. 1).
(^74) Lot and Fawtier, Institutions royales,480–5.
(^75) C.-V. Langlois, ‘Rouleaux d’arrêts du roi au xiiiesiècle’, Bibliothèque de l’École des
Chartes, 48 (1887), 177–208, 535–65, and 50 (1889), 43–67; Les Olim, ii. 3–49.
(^76) Lot and Fawtier, Institutions royales, 335.