difficulty
in conducting trade may be imagined. The nobles, solicitous to increase
their power, founded new towns and took them under their protection,
granting certain privileges to the inhabitants, even that of holding
land, and under the cover of these privileges, as under those of the
communes, the _tiers etat_, or third estate, was gradually formed.
Similar grants were made to some of the ancient cities, including Paris
and Orleans, which seemed to have received all their franchises from the
Middle Ages and from the kings, excepting, in Paris, the corporation of
the Nantes, already referred to, whose privileges were confirmed by
Louis VII.

This monarch, father of Philippe-Auguste, fixed the number of peers of
France, the great seigneurs who held directly from the crown, at
twelve,--six laic and six ecclesiastical. The first were the dukes of
Burgundy, Normandy, and Guyenne, the counts of Champagne, Flanders, and
Toulouse, and, to counterbalance these puissant lords, six
ecclesiastics, all the more attached to the king that they were without
landed property and consequently without much temporal power, the
Archbishop of Reims and the bishops of Laon, Noyon, Chalons, Beauvais,
and Langres. The Court of Peers was, however, not regularly organized
before the beginning of the thirteenth century. Notwithstanding the
weakness of the royal authority, it still retained elements of strength
and superiority which time eventually developed. The king was nominal
head of the whole feudal society, he was the chief suzerain, and all the
great lords were his vassals and owed him homage. He was the supreme
justice of the nation, and the vassals all were bound to appear before
the "Court of the King." This court was not only a great council, but
also a court of justice; the great vassals had the right to demand a
trial by their equals, or peers, and in this case the court became the
Court of Peers. The fief, held from the suzerain, could not be
diminished or impaired in any way--just as the modern tenant has no
right to damage his landlord's property; at the death of the vassal, the
suzerain inherited, and in case he left infant children, the suzerain
was the guardian.

Two incidents recorded by the chroniclers of the reign of that very
capable monarch, Louis VI, called le Gros, or the Fat, will serve to
illustrate the manners and customs of the times from two points of view.
A short time before the marriage of the king with Adela