every county whom he might order sheriffs to see elected along with two
burgesses from each of the larger towns. (The knights and burgesses
were joined in the ‘model parliament’ of 1295 and occasionally there-
after by procurators of the lower clergy.)^199 The French barons were first
summoned in 1302 and 1308 along with procurators of the clergy and
the communes to deliberate with King Philip on matters ‘touching the
honour, state and ancient liberty and defence of our realm and of the
churches, ecclesiastical persons, barons, other nobles and inhabitants of
the said realm’.^200 This inevitable recognition of the landed power and
military importance of the aristocracy also placed them in a constitu-
tional relationship with other estates. The burgesses were emerging as a
force in politics with which the lords had to come to terms. The result
of Edward I’s inclusion of town representatives in parliaments for the
easier negotiation of taxes and customs duties was the ability of the
Commons in his son’s reign to advance a whole programme of bills on
economic matters, and their taking the lead in assenting to fiscal legis-
lation.^201 In France, according to J. R. Strayer, it would have been
impossible to have convoked the great assemblies which Philip the Fair
used to combat Pope Boniface VIII and suppress the Templars without
the pattern of representation largely set by the chartered towns.^202 The
towns also contributed energy and purpose to the provincial meetings
of estates to answer the king’s fiscal demands, which were as important
in late medieval France as the infrequent meetings of the Estates General
of France, or of Languedoil, or Languedoc.^203
The French nobility continued to receive confirmation of its privi-
leges, but as part of general grants to the whole communities of the
various bailliages, ‘nobles and non-nobles’, grants made avowedly out
of consideration for ‘the state and reformation of our realm’: in fact in
return for subsidies payable by everyone according to the ‘worth and
status of their persons and households’.^204 The nobles then began to
look for a new privilege—exemption from royal taxation on the
grounds that their contribution to the country’s defence was in the field,
so that more even than in England, the third estate was left the function
232 Legal Ordering of ‘the State of the Realm’
(^199) J. G. Edwards, The Commons in Medieval English Parliaments (U. of London:
Creighton Lecture, 1958); Harding, England in the Thirteenth Century, 144, 148, 218–19,
221–2, 226.
(^200) Documents relatifs aux États Généraux et Assemblées réunis sous Philippe le Bel, ed.
G. Picot, Collection de Documents inédits sur l’histoire de France (Paris, 1901), 26, 491.
(^201) W. M. Ormrod, ‘Agenda for Legislation, 1322–c.1340’, EHR105 (1990).
(^202) Strayer, Reign of Philip the Fair, 110–11, 271–2, 275, 277.
(^203) R. Fawtier and A. Coville, Histoire du moyen âge, vi (Paris, 1940–1), 253 ff., 524–6; Lot
and Fawtier, Institutions royales, 547 ff.; Lewis, Later Medieval France, 328 ff.; Guenée, States
and Rulers in Later Medieval Europe, 221.
(^204) Ordonnances des Roys de France, ii. 84–5, 120–8, 173, 262, 395, 410, 503, 507, 529,
531, 557, iii. 21, 675; Artonne, Le Mouvement de 1314, 163–74, 198–204, 207, 209, 212.