be hoped that some English scholar will do for
these most important records, the earliest report of any great
criminal trial which we possess, what Mr. T. Douglas Murray has done
for the Trial and Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc.]

Philip's reign is also remarkable for the establishment of the
Parlement in Paris. From earliest times of the Monarchy, the kings had
dispensed justice, surrounded by the chief Churchmen and nobles of the
land, thus constituting an ambulatory tribunal which was held wherever
the sovereign might happen to be. In 1302 Philip restricted it to
judicial functions, and housed it in his palace of the Cite, which on
the kings ceasing to dwell there in 1431 became the Palais de Justice.
The ancient palace was rebuilt and enlarged by Philip. A vast hall
with a double barrel-roof decorated with azure and gold, supported by
a central row of columns adorned with statues of the kings of
France--the most spacious and most beautiful Gothic chamber in
France--and other courts and offices accommodated the Parlement. The
tribunal was at first composed of twenty-six councillors or judges, of
whom thirteen were lawyers, presided over by the royal chancellor, and
sat twice yearly for periods of two months. It consisted of three
chambers or courts.[80] The nobles who at first sat among the lay
members gradually ceased to attend owing to a sense of their legal
inefficiency, and the Parlement became at length a purely legal body.
During the imprisonment of John the Good in England, the
Parlement[81] sat _en permanence_, and henceforth became the _cour
souveraine et capitale_ of the kingdom. The purity of its members was
maintained by severest penalties. In 1336 one of the presidents was
convicted of receiving bribes and hanged. Twelve years later the
falsification of some depositions was punished with the same severity,
and in 1545 a corrupt chancellor was fined 100,000 livres, degraded,
and imprisoned for five years. The chief executive officer of the
Parlement, known as the Concierge, appointed the bailiffs of the court
and had extensive local jurisdiction over dishonest merchants and
craftsmen, whose goods he could burn. His official residence, known as
the Conciergerie, subsequently became a prison, and so remains to this
day. The entrance flanked by the two ancient _tours de Cesar et
d'Argent_, is one of the most familiar objects in Paris. There the
Count of Armagnac was assassinated and the cells are still shown