r and held periodical
reviews or parades (_montres_), sometimes taking up arms in the king's
service in time of war. Of this there survived later only an annual
_cavalcade_, when the members of the Basoche went to the royal forest of
Bondy to cut the maypole, which they afterwards set up in the court-yard of
the Palais. We hear also of satirical and literary entertainments given by
clerks of the Palais de Justice, and of the moralities played by them in
public, which form an important element in the history of the national
theatre; but at the end of the 16th century these performances were
restricted to the great hall of the Palais.

To the last the Basoche retained two principal prerogatives. (1) In order
to be recognized as a qualified procureur it was necessary to have gone
through one's "stage" in the Basoche, to have been entered by name for ten
years on its register. It was not sufficient to have been merely clerk to a
procureur during the period and to have been registered at his office. This
rule was the occasion of frequent conflicts during the 17th and 18th
centuries between the members of the Basoche and the procureurs, and on the
whole, despite certain decisions favouring the latter, the parlement
maintained the rights of the Basoche. Opinion was favourable to it because
the _certificats de complaisance_ issued by the procureurs were dreaded.
These _certificats_ held good, moreover, in places where there was no
Basoche. (2) The Basoche had judiciary powers recognized by the law. It had
disciplinary jurisdiction over its members and decided personal actions in
civil law brought by one clerk against another or by an outsider against a
clerk. The judgment, at any rate if delivered by a _maitre des requetes_,
was authoritative, and could only be contested by a civil petition before
the ancient council of the Basoche. The Chatelet of Paris had its special
basoche, which claimed to be older even than that of the Palais de Justice,
and there was contention between them as to certain rights. The clerks of
the procureurs at the _cour des comptes_ of Paris had their own Basoche of
great antiquity, called the "empire de Galilee." The Basoche of the Palais
de Justice had in its ancient days the right to create provostships in
localities within the jurisdiction of the parlement of Paris, and thus
there sprang up a certain number of local basoches. Others were independent
in origin; among such being the "regency" of Rouen a