The Parlement of Paris by J. H. Shennan

Author:J. H. Shennan [Shennan, J. H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780750918305
Google: HCOJAAAAMAAJ
Publisher: Sutton
Published: 1998-01-15T02:41:04+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

The Parlement in the Sixteenth Century

DOI: 10.4324/9781003178316-9

Royal sovereignty and its limitations; Francis I and the concordat of 1516; the Parlemen’s attitude to the Reformation; its relations with the last Valois kings

The reign of Francis I has often been interpreted as marking a decisive period in the development of absolute monarchy in France. The king himself has been portrayed as an innovator, hostile to those traditions and influences which served to limit the authority of his predecessors, the chief instigator of a line of absolute rulers who considered their power to be unbridled and the state to be at their personal disposal.1 Such a view may be challenged, not only on the evidence of Francis’s reign, but also on the grounds that absolute monarchy in this sense had little meaning in France at any time before 1789. Support for that argument must be reserved for later chapters, but it is apposite to examine at once whether the developments of the king’s reign support a view of French monarchy different from the traditional one.

1 See, for example, F. von Meinecke, Machiavellianism, 382; R. Doucet, Etude sur le Gouvernement de François I”, I, 47; G. Pagès, La Mortarchie d’Ancien Regime, 3; but cf. J. Russell Major, Representative Institutions, 3–13, 126–7.

It would be absurd to maintain that all French rulers possessed identical powers: their authority waxed and waned according to the circumstances of the time and their personal qualities. Francis I indubitably wielded more power than most of his Capetian and Valois ancestors. The prestige and influence of the crown had grown enormously in the last years of the fifteenth century with the increasing homogeneity of the state. Yet, there are good grounds for arguing that his authority and that of his predecessors fitted into a unique context, that, despite changing conditions, the concept of monarchy, unlike the actual power exercised by individual monarchs, remained unaltered until the eighteenth century. Of course, a distinction needs to be drawn between changes in social status, whose ease of accomplishment a study of parlementaire origins alone demonstrates clearly enough,1 and the overriding permanence of the monarchical principle, which gave point to a hierarchical society and identity to the state. Although there was a good deal of movement between social classes, the social structure itself remained rigid under the crown. That fact does not itself prove that the nature of the king’s role remained unchanged, though it does suggest a basic continuity. The question of whether or not during the reign of Francis I traditional values ceased to influence royal policy must now be examined.

1 See supra, ill.

What those values were has already been intimated in earlier chapters: respect for the law, both statutory and customary, human and divine, for the established processes by which legislation was arrived at, for the advice of counsellors, for the privileges and immunities of the various individuals and groups who were the king’s subjects. These were the limitations upon his supreme power of dispensing justice and of making laws, limitations which

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