power.
The post was commonly filled by the archbishop of Reims, or the bishop
of Paris. The _cancellarius_, who formed part of the royal court and
administration, was officially known as the _sub-cancellarius_ in
relation to the _summus cancellarius_, but as _proto-cancellarius_ in
regard to his subordinate _cancellarii_. He was a very great officer, an
ecclesiastic who was the chief of the king's chaplains or king's clerks,
who administered all ecclesiastical affairs; he had judicial powers, and
from the 12th century had the general control of foreign affairs. The
chancellor in fact became so great that the Capetian kings, who did not
forget the mayor of the palace, grew afraid of him. Few of the early
ecclesiastical chancellors failed to come into collision with the king,
or parted with him on good terms. Philip Augustus suspended the
chancellorship throughout the whole of his reign, and appointed a keeper
of the seals (_garde des sceaux_). The office was revived under Louis
VIII., but the ecclesiastical chancellorship was finally suppressed in
1227. The king of the 13th century employed only keepers of the seal.
Under the reign of Philip IV. le Bel lay chancellors were first
appointed. From the reign of Charles V. to that of Louis XI. the French
_chancelier_ was elected by the royal council. In the 16th century he
became irremovable, a distinction more honourable than effective, for
though the king could not dismiss him from office he could, and on some
occasions did, deprive him of the right to exercise his functions, and
entrusted them to a keeper of the seal. The _chancelier_ from the 13th
century downwards was the head of the law, and performed the duties
which are now entrusted to the minister of justice. His office was
abolished when in 1790 the whole judicial system of France was swept
away by the Revolution. The smaller _chanceliers_ of the provincial
parlements and royal courts disappeared at the same time. But when
Napoleon was organizing the empire he created an arch-chancellor, an
office which was imitated rather from the _Erz-Kanzler_ of the Holy
Roman Empire than from the old French _chancelier_. At the Restoration
the office of chancellor of France was restored, the chancellor being
president of the House of Peers, but it was finally abolished at the
revolution of 1848. The administration of the Legion of Honour is
presided over by a _grand chancelier_, who is a grand cross of the
order, and who advises