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commentators, were accepted in sixteenth-century France. Jurists identified the king with the Roman princeps and declared him to be emperor within his own kingdom. This simply meant that he was independent of both pope and Holy Roman Emperor in temporal matters. The idea of his absolute authority was universally accepted in French law, but he was not expected to rule absolutely without his subjects’ consent as expressed through certain institutions, notably the Parlement of Paris, which was commonly regarded as the modern equivalent of the ancient Roman Senate.

      The best-known statement of the constitutionalism that prevailed in sixteenth-century France was La Monarchie de France by Claude de Seyssel, who became bishop of Marseille after long years of service to the crown as a councillor, administrator and diplomat. Like Machiavelli he was a realist, who viewed politics as a science distinct from morality and religion. Being an Aristotelian, he valued moderation in a constitution, and believed that the French kings owed their greatness to their voluntary acceptance of three constraints (freins) – religion, justice and la police – on their power. Writing of justice, Seyssel affirms that it is ‘better authorized in France than in any other country we know in all the world. This is especially owing to the parlements, which have been instituted to put a bridle on the absolute power that our kings would have wished to use.’

      However absolute, the monarch needed an administrative machinery at the centre of the kingdom and in the localities, to carry out his policies. Its chief component was the king’s council, which in 1500 was still evolving. In theory its members comprised the princes of the blood, the peers of the realm and the great officers of state, but in practice admission was by royal invitation. Before 1526 the council was a large body. Between August 1484 and January 1485 there were 120 councillors, but only a small proportion of them attended with any degree of frequency. It is likely that a core of working councillors existed within the larger body. In 1502 this core consisted of only four members, of whom three belonged to the house of Amboise. Financial business was apparently dealt with separately by experts, who nevertheless continued to attend the council when non-financial matters were being discussed, The council might also divide for administrative convenience. Thus in 1494 part of the council followed Charles VIII to Italy while the rest stayed in Moulins with Pierre de Bourbon. The situation has been described as ‘one of relative informality and of response to immediate royal needs. Some councillors were specialists and the disposition of personnel in terms of location was fluid, but these were not structural arrangements within the council as an institution.’

      There were many routes to membership of the council: birth, skill in law, diplomacy or administration, regional importance, ecclesiastical dignity and the influence of patrons and relatives. Councillors served at the king’s pleasure, not for life, and membership was not hereditary. Some councillors served under all three kings from 1483 to 1526, but membership was usually for shorter periods. The council was not only a point of contact between the crown, the nobility and local communities; it was also a tool which the crown used to secure the obedience of the governing classes and to arbitrate between them.

      The body responsible for turning the council’s decisions into laws was the chancery, headed by the Chancellor of France. He was invariably an eminent jurist, who had served his apprenticeship in a parlement, and sometimes he was also a high-ranking churchman. His powers and duties ranged more widely than those of any other great officer of the crown. In effect, he was a kind of prime minister. As head of the royal chancery, he kept the Great seal and other seals of state. All documents emanating from the king and his council were drawn up in the chancery and sealed in the chancellor’s presence. He had to ensure that the text of each document matched the orders received, and could refuse to seal any that seemed incorrect. This power, moreover, extended to all the other chanceries in the kingdom, including those of the ‘sovereign courts’. The chancellor’s authority was, therefore, nation-wide. His influence on legislation was also crucial. He exercised it not only as a councillor but also by drafting royal edicts himself. As head of the judicial administration, he was by right entitled to preside over any sovereign court, including the parlement. He appointed judges and received their oaths of office unless they had already sworn them before the king. The chancellor attended the king’s council regularly and took the chair in the king’s absence. He helped to determine policies and explained them, if necessary, to the parlement. Now and again he served on major diplomatic missions. He was appointed for life by the king, but, if necessary, his functions could be performed by a Keeper of the Seals, who did not have his prestige or influence.

      The chancery was the nearest equivalent to a modern ministry. In 1500 it had a staff of 120 which grew even larger during the sixteenth century. Unlike the ‘sovereign courts’, it continued to follow the king on his travels. Originally, all the chancery clerks drew up documents to be sealed by the great seal, but during the Middle Ages they began to specialize: the clercs du secret drafted documents emanating directly from the king; in time they became known as secretaries. Under an ordinance of 1482 notaries of the chancery were effectively granted a monopoly of drawing up and signing all royal acts, chancery letters, conciliar decisions and decrees of the ‘sovereign courts’. They were automatically ennobled and enjoyed the privilege of committimus as well as numerous tax exemptions. The quantity of documents processed by them was enormous.

      Closely associated with the chancellor were the masters of requests (maîtres des requêtes de l’hôtel). There were eight of them about 1500, but their number increased rapidly thereafter. Under an edict of 1493 they were authorized to preside at the courts of the bailliages and sénéchaussées, to receive complaints against local officials and to correct abuses. They could preside at the Grand conseil and sit in the parlement, where they ranked immediately below the presidents. The masters of requests were often given temporary commissions in financial, diplomatic and judicial affairs. They were the ancestors of the intendants, who became the principal agents of royal centralization in the seventeenth century.

      The Great Council (Grand conseil) was an exclusively judicial body which had taken over part of the work formerly exercised by the king’s council: it investigated complaints against royal officials, intervened in conflicts of jurisdiction between other courts and could revoke enactments that the parlement had registered. It also acted as a court of appeal and of first instance for a wide range of lawsuits. Though the Great Council’s procedure was fairly simple and relatively cheap, it had one serious disadvantage for suitors: like the king’s council, it continued to follow the king on his travels through the kingdom. It carried its records around, and suitors had to change their lawyers as it moved from place to place. Because of its closeness to the king’s person, the Great Council was more susceptible to his influence than was the parlement, and he often used it to bend the law to his interest.

      The king of France was first and foremost a judge, and the earliest form of royal intervention at the local level had been the establishment of officials charged with exercising justice in his name. At the bottom of the hierarchy, but above the judges of the feudal courts, were magistrates, called prévôts, viguiers or vicomtes, whose powers were limited to the simplest cases. The basic unit of local government was the bailliage (sometimes called sénéchaussée). The kingdom comprised about 100 such units, which could vary enormously in size. By the sixteenth century, the official in charge of the bailliage, the bailli (or sénéchal), had purely honorific or military duties (for example, he summoned the feudal levy, called the ban et arrière-ban), but the tribunal of the bailliage, under the bailli’s deputy or lieutenant and his staff, was a hive of activity, bustling with barristers, solicitors, sergeants and ushers. The bailliage judged on appeal cases sent up from inferior courts and in first instance cases concerning privileged persons or cas royaux. These were crimes committed against the king’s person, rights and demesne, ranging from treason and lèse-majesté to rape and high-way robbery. In addition to their judicial competence, the bailliages had important administrative powers: they published royal statutes and issued decrees of their own.

      Above the bailliages were the parlements of which there were seven in 1500: Paris, Toulouse, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Dijon, Rouen and Aix-en-Provence. The oldest and most prestigious was the Parlement of Paris which had ‘gone out of court’ in the thirteenth

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