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."

At the time of his accession, Hugh Capet was Count of Paris, and as such
was invested with judicial powers, which he resigned in 987, on the
understanding that his county of Paris, after the decease of the male
heirs of his brother Eudes, should return to the crown. In 1032, a new
magistrate was created, called the Provost of Paris, whose duty it was to
give assistance to the bourgeois in arresting persons for debt. This
functionary combined in his own person the financial and political chief
of the capital, he was also the head of the nobility of the county, he was
independent of the governor, and was placed above the bailiffs and
seneschals. He was the senior of the urban magistracy and police, leader
of the municipal troops, and, in a word, the prefect (_praefectus urbis_),
as he was called under the Emperor Aurelian, or the first magistrate of
Lutetia, as he was still called under Clotaire in 663. Assessors were
associated with the provost, and together they formed a tribunal, which
was afterwards known as the Chatelet (Fig. 303), because they assembled in
that fortress, the building of which