persons equal in estate and dignity’, after open and honest discussion in
council. De Mézières continues the emphasis of French writers on the
king’s need for good council, and adds to it a warning against ‘public
alliances’ among subjects which go beyond the normal allegiance of
feudal lords and vassals, such as alliances between magnates and royal
officials that allow the former to learn government secrets. Movement
around the chessboard to inspect the workings of French government
culminates in a detailing of preparations for the passage to the Holy
Land. Truth recommends that a council drawn from ‘the four hier-
archies of the three estates’ be assembled to grant a subsidy to the king,
to agree on laws curbing extravagance in French society for the king to
approve, and to appoint suitable men in each bailliage, again drawn
from the three estates, to settle law-suits quickly (against the protests of
advocates) and end private war.^63
Le Songe du Vieil Pèlerinwas an impressive attempt to capture the
structure of the French polity, and the image of the great ship was
needed to represent a unity of purpose among an increasing diversity of
estates: a function more often, if less forcefully, performed by the
metaphor of ‘the body politic’ with head, soul, and members. The idea
that the secular polity was ‘a mystical body’, like the Church, was gain-
ing currency from Charles V’s reign.^64 But lawyers and politicians could
express the notion of a governing part in other and less fanciful ways
than as the master of a ship or head of a body. Perhaps from the death
of the last and childless son of Philip the Fair in 1328 and the accession
of the new Valois dynasty, continuity of rule was symbolized at a king’s
funeral by the fact that the presidents of the chambers of parlement
alone did not wear mourning—the administration of justice was one
thing that never died.^65 An older idea which gained strength in the
troubles of the fourteenth century was that of the ‘Crown’ as the
property and powers to which each king succeeded only as a steward,
and which his people insisted that he should not alienate or diminish.
Deputies chosen from the three estates summoned to the great meeting
of 1356 were sworn to give loyal advice, make provision, and report
back to their estates concerning the ‘crown’ as well as the ‘state’ of
France, the means of the king’s deliverance from captivity, the ‘estate’
of the duke of Normandy (the dauphin), and the chose publique.^66 The
The king in the French body politic 277(^63) Ibid. ii. 3–114, 175 ff., 226, 278, 284, 292, 298, 306, 316, 319, 344–6, 350–5, 363,
369 ff., 385–403; The Cambridge History of Political Thought c.350–c.1450, ed. J. H. Burns
(Cambridge UP, 1988), 540–1; on the ‘public alliances’ De Mézières warns against see P. S.
Lewis, ‘Of Breton Alliances and other Matters’, repr. in his Essays in Later Medieval French
History(London, 1985), 69–71.
(^64) Le Songe du Vieil Pèlerin, i. 112, ii. 96–8, 432–3; Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies,
218.
(^65) Kantorowicz, ibid.417–19.
(^66) Cazelles, Société politique, noblesse et couronne sous Jean le Bon et Charles V, 505–16;