[Illustration: Fig. 304.--The King's Court, or Grand Council.--Fac-simile
of a Miniature in the "Chroniques" of Froissart, Manuscript of the
Fifteenth Century (formerly in the possession of Charles V), in the
Library of the Arsenal, Paris.]
In the time of Philippe le Bel there existed in reality but one
Parliament, and that was the _King's Court_. Its action was at once
political, administrative, financial, and judicial, and was necessarily,
therefore, of a most complicated character. Philippe le Bel made it
exclusively a judicial court, defined the territorial limit of its power,
and gave it as a judicial body privileges tending to strengthen its
independence and to raise its dignity. He assigned political functions to
the Great Council (_Conseil d'Etat_); financial matters to the chamber of
accounts; and the hearing of cases of heresy, wills, legacies, and dowries
to the prelates. But in opposition to the wise edict of 1295, he
determined that Jews should be excluded from Parliament, and prelates from
the palace of justice; by which latter proceeding he was depriving justice
of the abilities of the most worthy representatives of the Gallican
Church. But Philippe le Bel and his successors, while incessantly
quarrelling either with the aristocracy or with the clergy, wanted the
great judicial bodies which issued the edicts, and the urban or municipal
magistrates--which, being subject to re-election, were principally
recruited from among the bourgeois--to be a common centre of opposition to
any attempt at usurpation of power, whether on the part of the Church, the
nobility, or the crown.
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