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.

The Great Days of Troyes (dies magni Trecenses), the assizes of the ancient counts of Champagne, and the exchequer of Normandy, were also organized by Philipe le Bel; and, further, he authorised the maintenance of a Parliament at Toulouse, a court which he solemnly opened in person on the 10th of January, 1302.  In times of war the Parliament of Paris sat once a year, in times of peace twice.  There were, according to circumstances, during the year two, three, or four sittings of the exchequer of Normandy, and two of the Great Days of Troyes, tribunals which were annexed to the Parliament of Paris, and generally presided over by one of its delegates, and sometimes even by the supreme head of that high court.  At the King’s council (Fig. 304) it was decided whether a case should be reserved for the Parliament of Paris, or passed on either to the exchequer or to the Great Days of Troyes.

As that advanced reformer, Philippe le Bel, died before the institutions he had established had taken root, for many years, even down to the time of Louis XI., a continual conflict for supremacy was waged between the Parliament of Paris and the various courts of the kingdom—­between the counts and the Parliament, and between the latter and the King, which, without lessening the dignity of the crown, gradually tended to increase the influence which the judges possessed.  Immediately on the accession of Louis le Hutin, in 1314, a reaction commenced—­the higher clergy re-entered Parliament; but Philippe le Long took care that the laity should be in a majority, and did not allow that in his council of State the