realm its function of registering new laws, including financial edicts,
along with its scrutiny of the proceedings of the central Chambre des
Comptesand adjudication on market rights in the country, would give
parlementconsiderable authority in economic matters. It insisted that
crown property was inalienable; it swore in the king’s councillors,
marshals, and admirals; it watched over the privileges of the University
of Paris.^77 No part of clerical life escaped its attentions: it enforced royal
protection of churches, which might claim to plead their cases in parle-
mentalone, and became the chief defender of the rights of the Gallican
church against both the papacy and kings who made concordats with
popes to the French church’s detriment. Yet its constant intervention to
judge between the claims of churches, landlords, and baillisto juris-
diction, its policing of the limits of ecclesiastical justice and vigilance
against clerical abuse of excommunication and sanctuary, and its pro-
vision of alternative procedures in disputes arising from marriages and
wills steadily eroded the Church’s position as a state within a state.
Prelates could be judged in parlementif nowhere else, but in 1319 they
were excluded from membership of parlement(though not from the
king’s council) ostensibly so that they could devote themselves to their
religious duties.^78
Whether answering the complaints of subjects, cutting down indi-
vidual or communal liberties, making sure the great churches con-
tributed to the defences of the towns they dominated, or guarding the
peace of the capital and correcting the largely criminal jurisdiction of
the prévôtof Paris at the Châtelet, the parlementof Paris was conscious
of acting for the utility of the kingdom. It was, after all, the royal
council answering the complaints as well as judging the rights of the
king’s people, and the king himself had regular times for sitting in it.
Parlementcensored the customs of the country and effectively made law
through its regulation of the administrative behaviour of baillisand
sénéchaux. Its orders merged into the general établissementswhich the
king made ‘pour le commun pourfit’ and similarly dispatched to the
baillisfor publication and enforcement.^79 An ordinance requiring those
exercising temporal jurisdiction for private lords to be laymen, not
clerics, was ‘registered among the judgments, counsels, and decrees’ of
parlement.^80 An order which Philip IV sent to the provost of Paris and
The bill revolution and parlement 169(^77) Ibid. 435–40.
(^78) Les Olim, ii. 490 (v); Lot and Fawtier, Institutions royales,448–68.
(^79) Ordonnances des Roys de France, i. 314, 318–19, 323; Beaumanoir, Coutumes de
Beauvaisis, i. 39–40 (§51); Langlois, Textes, 186–7 (cxxvi, §10, cxxvi bis); Strayer, Reign of
Philip the Fair, 24, 70, 75, 86–8, 208, 230–6, 245–6; R. W. Kaeuper, War, Justice, and Public
Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988),
pp. 240, 258–9.
(^80) Ordonnances des Roys de France, i. 316–17.