‘the Estate of King’ because of his ‘defaults in governance’. The
Commons in parliament could nevertheless protest to the new king that
they intended nothing and discussed nothing against his ‘prerogative or
estate royal’.^52
The king in the French body politic
The king of France was subjected to stern advice about kingship from
churchmen, but he never allowed assemblies of estates to be used to pre-
scribe how he governed. An early vernacular tract on government or
princey, ‘The estate and governance (L’estat et le gouvernement) of a
prince’, written, perhaps for the future King John, in 1347, and trans-
lated into English a hundred years later for King Henry VI, exhorts the
‘Prince or great estate of this world’ to follow the ‘prudent counsel’ of
Giles (of Rome) and first learn ‘the state of himself’ so that he will ‘be
governed after his estate’. Then he must see that his household and
domains are properly ruled, with special attention to his revenues and
spending ‘for the good governance of his estate’ and the defence of his
principality. Above all, a prince is established by God in ‘his estate and
reign’ to govern his people justly. He should not despair if he finds his
lands in a ‘feeble state’ when he first comes to govern, but set out to
reform what is amiss with the help of ‘good and true counsel’, travelling
about to listen to his subjects’ plaintes et doléancesand appointing wise
and loyal ‘refourmateurs’ who will take pains to do justice on their
grievances.^53
In that year of 1347, following the English victory at Crecy, an
assembly of the French estates, the Parisian bourgeoisie to the fore, were
complaining bitterly of the poor return they were getting for the endless
taxes imposed upon the country. By the time Nicole of Oresme, a
master of the university and royal servant who died in 1382 as bishop
of Lisieux, wrote for Charles V ‘the earliest viable translation’ of
Aristotle’s Ethicsand Politicsinto a vernacular language and composed
the most pertinent commentary upon them (for which the king paid 220
gold francs), the chances of the estates-general scrutinizing taxation and
participating in reforming legislation had been blown away. After the
brutalities of the Jacquerie of 1358, when the peasants in central France
sacked the castles of the nobles they saw as deserting the reforming
cause, only to be slaughtered in their turn and take down with them
The king in the French body politic 271(^52) RPiii. 422–44, 572; EHDiv. 172–87.
(^53) Four English Political Tracts, ed. Genet, 180, 183–4, 188–9, 206, 210, 217–18; see
R. Cazelles, La Société politique et la crise de la royauté sous Philippe de Valois(Paris, 1958),
403–26, for a succinct description of French royal government at this time.