the legal norms of church and kingdom could be best preserved in
pictures.^11
Legislation to ‘reform the state of the realm for the better’ (statum
regni in melius) provided political continuity most obviously in France
and England, where the fourteenth-century crises of war, plague, and
social unrest made it the subject of anxious debate in the meetings of
estates and parliaments. Louis IX’s comprehensive reform of French
administration in the Grande Ordonnanceof 1254 had been followed
in Philip IV’s Magna Statutaof 1303, itself confirmed by later ordi-
nances.^12 These continued to be accompanied by the appointment of
enquêteurs-réformateursto deal with grievances in the localities.^13 But
when the ‘les trois estas du royaume de France, de la langue de oil’,
clergy, nobles, and bonnes villes, were summoned in 1356, in the after-
math of King John’s defeat and capture at Poitiers, to give council
‘on things touching the honour, profit and estat of the realm’, the
deliverance of the king and the provision of an aid for the ‘necessities of
the kingdom’, these deputies brought up to Paris complaints of ‘the
defects [deffaulx] which have been in the kingdom of France’, in the
administration of justice, in ‘the government of the estate of the prince’
and of his household, in the conduct of the war, in the management of
the king’s finances, and in the appointment of councillors and officials.
They dared no longer stay silent, they said, about the behaviour of the
baillis, captains of pays, tax-collectors, and others, who obtained their
offices by bribery and friendship and could have nothing proved against
them because of their mutual alliances; or about the delays faced by
nobles and bourgeoiswho appealed to the king’s court and went away
after a fortnight, three weeks, a month, or more, without an answer and
so impoverished and disgruntled that some who had been French
became English. For the sake of the body politic (chose publique), and
in return for the grant of an aid, it was necessary to establish ‘good and
stable moneys’, to reform ‘l’estat de toutes les chambres des comptes’,
to appoint tax-collectors who would have regard to the utilité publique
and see that in future aids were spent on the purposes they were given
for. The subsequent ordinances answered the grievances of the estates in
the terms of a century-long experience of ‘reforming’ legislation.^14
Political continuity 255(^11) A. Melnikas, The Corpus of the Miniatures in the Manuscripts of the Decretum Gratiani,
Studia Gratiana, 16–18 (Rome, 1975), i. 115–31, for images of simony; W. Koschorreck, Der
Sachsenspiegel in Bildern(Frankfurt, 1976), 54–9, for representations of the protected status
of clerics and Jews under Landfriede.
(^12) Ordonnances des Roys de France, ii. 450, iii. 2, 121–53, 223, 647, iv. 214–16; F. Olivier-
Martin, Histoire du droit français, 2nd edn. (Montchrestien, 1951), 352–6.
(^13) J. R. Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair(Princeton UP, 1980), 387, 414.
(^14) R. Delachenal, ‘Journal des États Généraux réunis à Paris au mois d’octobre 1356’,
Nouvelle Revue Historique de Droit Français et Étranger, 24 (1900), 415–65; R. Cazelles,
Société politique, noblesse et couronne sous Jean le Bon et Charles V(Paris, 1982), 28–30,