Editing Parlement (section)

==Origin==
[[File:Parlement-Paris-Charles7.jpg|thumb|''[[Lit de justice]]'' held by [[Charles VII of France]] at [[Vendôme]]]]
[[File:Toulouse - Nicolas Bertrand, Opus de Tholosanorum gestis ab urbe condita - Détail.jpg|thumb|Engraving by Nicolas Bertrand from 1515 showing a session of the [[Parlement of Toulouse]] presided over by King Francis I of France.]]
The first parlement in Ancien Régime France developed in the 13th century out of the King's Council ({{langx|fr|[[Conseil du roi]]|link=no}}, {{langx|la|[[curia regis]]}}), and consequently enjoyed ancient, customary consultative and deliberative prerogatives.<ref>G. W. Prothero, "The Parliament [''sic''] of Paris", ''The English Historical Review'', '''13''', No. 50 (April 1898), pp. 229–241.</ref>
{{blockquote|[[Louis IX of France|St. Louis]] established only one of these crown courts, which had no fixed locality, but followed him wherever he went.<br>[...]<br>The "parlement" of St. Louis consisted of three high barons, three prelates, and nineteen knights, to whom were added 18 councillors or men learned in the law.<br>These lawyers, clad in long black robes, sat on benches below the high nobles; but as the nobles left to them the whole business of the court, they soon became the sole judges, and formed the nucleus of the present French Magistracy.<ref name="Cobham Brewer 1878, p. 68">{{cite book|author=Rev. Dr. Cobham Brewer|author-link=Ebenezer Cobham Brewer|location=London|title=The Political, Social, and Literary History of France|year=1878|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PuJBAAAAYAAJ|page=68}}</ref>}}

[[Philip IV of France|Philippe le Bel]] was the first to fix this court to Paris,<ref name="Cobham Brewer 1878, p. 68"/> in 1302, officially severing it from the King's Council in 1307. The Parlement of Paris would hold sessions inside the medieval [[Palace|royal palace]] on the [[Île de la Cité]], nowadays still the site in Paris of the [[Palais de Justice, Paris|Hall of Justice]]. The parlement also had the duty to record all royal edicts and laws. By the 15th century the Parlement of Paris had a right of "remonstrance to the king" (a formal statement of grievances), which was at first simply of an advisory nature.

In the meantime, the jurisdiction of the Parlement of Paris had been covering the entire kingdom as it was in the 14th century, but did not automatically advance in step with the Crown's ever expanding realm. In 1443, following the turmoil of the [[Hundred Years' War]], King [[Charles VII of France]] granted [[Languedoc]] its own parlement by establishing the [[Parlement of Toulouse]], the first parlement outside Paris; its jurisdiction extended over most of southern France. From 1443 until the French Revolution, several other parlements would be steadily created all over France {{See below|{{section link||List of parlements and sovereign councils of the Kingdom of France}}, below}}; these locations were provincial capitals of those [[Provinces of France|provinces]] with strong historical traditions of independence before they were annexed to France (in some of these regions, provincial States-General also continued to meet and legislate with a measure of self-governance and control over taxation within their jurisdiction).

===16th and 17th centuries===
Over time, some parlements, especially the one in Paris, gradually acquired the habit of using their right of remonstrance to refuse to register legislation, which they adjudged as either untimely or contrary to the local customary law (and there were 300 customary law jurisdictions), until the king held a ''[[lit de justice]]'' or sent a ''[[Letters patent|lettre de jussion]]'' to force them to act. By the 16th century, the parlement judges were of the opinion that their role included active participation in the legislative process, which brought them into increasing conflict with the ever increasing monarchical [[Absolutism (European history)|absolutism]] of the Ancien Régime, as the ''lit de justice'' evolved during the 16th century from a constitutional forum to a royal weapon, used to force registration of edicts.<ref>Mack P. Holt, "The King in Parliament: The Problem of the ''Lit de Justice'' in Sixteenth-Century France" ''The Historical Journal'' (September 1988) 32#3  pp:507–523.</ref> The transmission of judicial offices had also been a common practice in France since the late Middle Ages; tenure on the court was generally bought from the royal authority; and such official positions could be made hereditary by paying a tax to the King called ''la [[Paulette (tax)|paulette]]''. Assembled in the parlements, the largely hereditary members, the provincial nobles of the robe were the strongest decentralizing force in a France that was more multifarious in its legal systems, taxation, and custom than it might have seemed under the apparent unifying rule of its kings. Nevertheless, the Parlement of Paris had the largest jurisdiction of all the parlements, covering the major part of northern and central France, and was simply known as "the parlement".

====The Fronde====
The Parlement of Paris played a major role in stimulating the nobility to resist the expansion of royal power by military force during the [[Fronde]], 1648–1649. In the end, King [[Louis XIV of France|Louis XIV]] won out and the nobility was humiliated.<ref>A. Lloyd Moote. ''The Revolt of the Judges: the Parliament of Paris and the Fronde, 1643–1652'' ([[Princeton University Press]], 1971)</ref>

[[Image:Rennes - Parlement de Bretagne.jpg|thumb|The palace of the [[Parlement of Rennes|Parlement of Brittany]] in Rennes]]
The parlements' ability to withhold their assent by formulating remonstrances against the king's edicts forced the king to react, sometimes resulting in repeated resistance by the parlements, which the king could only terminate in his favour by issuing a ''lettre de jussion'', and, in case of continued resistance, appearing in person in the parlement: the ''[[lit de justice]]''. In such a case, the parlement's powers were suspended for the duration of this royal session. [[Louis XIV of France|King Louis XIV]] moved to centralize authority into his own hands, imposing certain restrictions on the parlements: in 1665, he ordained that a ''lit de justice'' could be held without the king having to appear in person; in 1667, he limited the number of remonstrances to only one. In 1671–1673, however, the parlements resisted the taxes needed to fund the [[Franco-Dutch War]]. In 1673, the king imposed additional restrictions that stripped the parlements of any influence upon new laws by ordaining that remonstrances could only be issued after registration of the edicts. After Louis' death in 1715, all the restrictions were discontinued by the regent, although some of the judges of the Parlement of Paris accepted royal bribes to restrain that body until the 1750s.<ref>John J. Hurt, ''Louis XIV and the parlements: The Assertion of Royal Authority'' (2002) pp 195–96</ref>

===Role leading to the French Revolution===
[[File:Pierre-Denis Martin 003.jpg|thumb|Louis XV leaving the Parlement of Paris on 12 September 1715]]
After 1715, during the reigns of [[Louis XV of France|Louis XV]] and [[Louis XVI of France|Louis XVI]], the parlements repeatedly challenged the crown for control over policy, especially regarding taxes and religion.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Roche |first=Daniel |title=France in the Enlightenment |date=1998 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=0-6743-1747-5 |pages=462–482 |translator-last=Goldhammer |translator-first=Arthur |ol=695151M |author-link=Daniel Roche (historian)}}</ref> Furthermore, the parlements had taken the habit of passing ''arrêts de règlement'', which were laws or regulatory decrees that applied within their jurisdiction for the application of royal edicts or of customary practices.{{Efn|Among the earliest examples of such decisions had been ordinances rendered by the [[Exchequer of Normandy]] by the 15th century.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Soudet |first=F. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C8nUAAAAMAAJ |title=Ordonnances de l'Echiquier de Normandie aux XIV{{Sup|e}} et XV{{Sup|e}} siècles |date=1929 |quote=Une sentence prise dans les formes solennelles de l'arrêt tendait à fixer la jurisprudence, mais, dans plus d'un cas, l'Echiquier allait plus loin: il décrétait que la solution serait observée dans ce cas et dans tous autres cas semblables. La décision prenait donc le caractère des arrêts de règlement dont les Parlements usèrent à la fin de l'ancien régime.}}</ref>}} At a session of the Parlement of Paris in 1766 known as the [[Flagellation Session]],  Louis XV asserted that sovereign power resided in his person only.

In the years immediately before the start of the [[French Revolution]] in 1789, their extreme concern to preserve Ancien Régime institutions of noble privilege prevented France from carrying out many simple reforms, especially in the area of taxation, even when those reforms had the support of the king.<ref>[[Julian Swann]], ''Politics and the Parliament of Paris under Louis XV, 1754–1774'' (1995).</ref>

[[René Nicolas Charles Augustin de Maupeou|Chancellor René Nicolas de Maupeou]] sought to reassert royal power by suppressing the parlements in 1770. His famous attempts, known as Maupeou's Reform, resulted in a furious battle and failure. Parlements were disbanded and their members arrested. After Louis XV died, the parlements were restored.{{Sfn|Doyle|1970|pp=415–458}}

The beginning of the proposed radical changes began with the protests of the Parlement of Paris addressed to Louis XVI in March 1776, in which the [[Estates General (France)|Second Estate]], the nobility, resisted the beginning of certain reforms that would remove their privileges, notably their exemption from taxes. The objections were made in reaction to the essay, ''Réflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses'' ("Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth") by [[Anne Robert Jacques Turgot|Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot]]. The Second Estate reacted to the essay with anger to convince the king that the nobility still served a very important role and still deserved the same privileges of tax exemption as well as for the preservation of the [[Turgot Edict of 1776|guilds and corporations]] put in place to restrict trade, both of which were eliminated in the reforms proposed by Turgot.{{Sfn|Doyle|1970}}

In their remonstrance against the edict suppressing the [[corvée]] (March 1776), the Parlement of Paris – afraid that a new tax would replace the corvée, and that this tax would apply to all, introducing equality as a principle – dared to remind the king:

{{Blockquote|The personal service of the clergy is to fulfill all the functions relating to education and religious observances and to contribute to the relief of the unfortunate through its alms. The noble dedicates his blood to the defense of the state and assists the sovereign with his counsel. The last class of the nation, which cannot render such distinguished service to the state, fulfills its obligation through taxes, industry, and physical labor.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MB5zuyyQ4rMC&pg=PA120 |title=University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization, Volume 7: The Old Regime and the French Revolution |publisher=University of Chicago Press |date=1987 |isbn=978-0-2260-6950-0 |editor-last=John W. Boyer and Keith M. Baker |pages=119–21}}</ref>}}

The Second Estate (the nobility) consisted of approximately 1.5% of France's population, and was exempt from almost all taxes, including the Corvée Royale, which was a recent mandatory service in which the roads would be repaired and built by those subject to the corvée. In practice, anyone who paid a small fee could escape the corvée, so this burden of labor fell only to the poorest in France. The Second Estate was also exempt from the ''[[gabelle]]'', which was the unpopular tax on salt, and also the ''[[taille]]'', a land tax paid by peasants, and the oldest form of taxation in France.{{Efn|In the ''Pays d'État'', the ''taille'' was called ''réelle'', based on land ownership, and determined by a council; in the ''Pays d'Élection'' the taille was called ''personnelle'', based on the global capacity to pay, and assessed by the Intendant. In both cases, the tax was often considered arbitrary.}}

The Second Estate feared that it would have to pay the tax replacing the suppressed corvée. The nobles saw this tax as especially humiliating and below them, as they took great pride in their titles and their lineage, which often included those who had died in the defense of France. They saw this elimination of tax privilege as the gateway for more attacks on their rights and urged Louis XVI throughout the protests of the Parlement of Paris not to enact the proposed reforms.

These exemptions, as well as the right to wear a sword and their coat of arms, encouraged the idea of a natural superiority over the commoners that was common through the Second Estate, and as long as any noble was in possession of a fiefdom, he could collect a tax on the Third Estate called feudal dues, which would allegedly be for the Third Estate's protection (though this only applied to serfs and tenants of farmland owned by the nobility). Overall, the Second Estate had vast privileges that the Third Estate did not possess, which in effect protected the Second Estate's wealth and property, while hindering the Third Estate's ability to advance. The reforms proposed by Turgot and argued against in the protests of the Parlement of Paris conflicted with the Second Estates' interests to keep their hereditary privileges, and was the first step toward reform that seeped into the political arena. Turgot's reforms were unpopular among the commoners as well, who saw the parlements as their best defense against the power of the monarchy.