M. Desmaze, in his valuable researches on the history of the Parliament of Paris, says—­“In 1191, Philip Augustus, before starting for Palestine, established bailiwicks, which held their assizes once a month; during their sitting they heard all those who had complaints to make, and gave summary judgment.  The bailiff’s assize was held at stated periods from time to time, and at a fixed place; it was composed of five judges, the King deciding the number and quality of the persons who were to take part in the deliberations of the court for each session.  The royal court only sat when it pleased the King to order it; it accompanied the King wherever he went, so that it had no settled place of residence.”

Louis IX. ordered that the courts of the nobles should be consolidated with the King’s court, and succeeded in carrying out this reform.  The bailiffs who were the direct delegates of the sovereign power, assumed an authority before which even the feudal lord was obliged to bend, because this authority was supported by the people, who were at that time organized in corporations, and these corporations were again bound together in communes.  Under the bailiffs a system was developed, the principles of which more nearly resembled the Roman legislation than the right of custom, which it nevertheless respected, and the judicial trial by duel completely disappeared.  Inquiries and appeals were much resorted to in all kinds of proceedings, and Louis IX. succeeded in controlling the power of ecclesiastical courts, which had been much abused in reference to excommunication.  He also suppressed the arbitrary and ruinous confiscations which the nobles had unjustly made on their vassals.

[Illustration:  Fig. 302.—­The Palace as it was in the Sixteenth Century.—­After an Engraving of that Period, National Library of Paris (Cabinet des Estampes).]

The edict of 1276 very clearly established the jurisdiction of parliaments and bailiwicks; it defined the important duties of the bailiffs, and at the same time specified the mode in which proceedings should be taken; it also regulated the duties of counsel, maitres des requetes, auditors, and advocates.

To the bailiwicks already in existence Louis IX. added the four great assizes of Vermandois, of Sens, of Saint-Pierre-le-Moustier, and of Macon, “to act as courts of final appeal from the judgment of the nobles.”  Philippe le Bel went still further, for, in 1287, he invited “all those who possess temporal authority in the kingdom of France to appoint, for the purpose of exercising civil jurisdiction, a bailiff, a provost, and some serjeants, who were to be laymen, and not ecclesiastics, and if there should be ecclesiastics in the said offices, to remove them.”  He ordered, besides, that all those who had cases pending before the court of the King and the secular judges of the kingdom should be furnished with lay attorneys; though the chapters, as well as the abbeys and convents, were allowed to be represented by canons.  M. Desmaze adds, “This really amounted to excluding ecclesiastics from judicial offices, not only from the courts of the King, but also from those of the nobles, and from every place in which any temporal jurisdiction existed.”