ficant. His seneschals were ordered not to publish summonses to war except in the royal domains. This was to be done in the domain of the noble solely in cases of the arrière ban. The province of Berri having made the king a free grant of one fifth of the revenue for the Flemish war, the king gave orders to receive, but not enforce it. The nobles of Auvergne for every two thousand livres of revenue were to pay seven and a half sous a day, the price of a man-at-arms. The first edict for the organisation of the court also appears in the time of Philip the Long, and evinces the affluence of the courtiers as well as the necessity of restricting the right of ingress. Persons were forbidden to speak to the king during mass, and common persons were prohibited to come into his bedroom.

One of the latest schemes of Philip, much too advanced for his time, was to establish but one measure and one money throughout the kingdom. He calculated that this could not be done without great expense, and he proposed taking the fifth part of the goods of all his subjects for the purpose. But the townsfolk objected to the tax, whilst the nobles who had the right of coinage persisted in retaining so profitable a privilege. Philip was seized in the same year with dysentery and intermittent fever, which terminated in languor and confined him for months to his couch. The people did not fail to attribute his disease to the unheard-of exactions and extortions that he meditated. Philip the Long did not live to accomplish them; he expired in January, 1322.

No one put forward any claim on the part of the daughters of Philip the Long to the regal succession. Charles, the youngest son of Philip the Fair, was at once hailed as king; and so incontestably, that he seems to have dispensed with the ceremony of coronation. The first object with Charles, called, like his father, the Handsome or the Fair, was to leave an heir to the throne.

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Less cruel than Louis Hutin, he obtained a papal dispensation or divorce from his wife Blanche, not on account of the adultery of which she had been convicted, but on the plea of consanguinity. Charles immediately married Mary of Luxembourg, daughter of the late Emperor Henry the Seventh. This queen produced no heir, dying in premature childbirth within two years, when Charles married his cousin Jeanne, daughter of the Count d'Evreux.

The first years of the reign of Charles the Fair were chiefly marked by a trial, in which severity was at least warranted by justice, and in which the king and his court were above sparing culprits even of the highest connection. Jourdan de Lille, Lord of Casaubon in Gascony, having married the niece of Pope John the Twenty-second, considered himself above restraint. Accused of eighteen crimes each worthy of death, the king had spared him, out of consideration for the Pope; but Casaubon resumed his old habits. No traveller or merchant was safe from his rapine, nor damsel, nor even man, from his violence. Summoned to appear before the court of parliament to answer some of these acts, the Gascon lord beat with his own mace the royal sergent who bore the summons. He came to Paris, nevertheless, with a noble suite, bravely reckoning on impunity. He was, however, committed to prison, tried, condemned to death, and hanged, says the Chronicle of St. Denis, "in the cloth of his father-in-law, the Pope."

The Count of Flanders dying, his succession was claimed by his second son, Robert. His eldest son, the Count of Nevers, had expired while imprisoned in Paris, and the Chronicle suggests the probability of his death having been promoted (avancé) by his gaolers. The son of this prince was no doubt the rightful heir, and was preferred as such by the Flemings and the French king. Louis accordingly hastened to Flanders, and was cordially received by the people of Bruges. But

when the young count proceeded to tax the citizens
with no light hand, and without consulting them, as
was the fashion in France, the Flemings rebelled. The
count suspected his uncle Robert of fostering their
opposition, and sent commissioners to slay him in his
residence near Lille. The Flemish chancellor warned.
him of his danger, and Robert escaped. The count,
mistrusting his chancellor, arrested him, and asked,
why he had revealed his secret?
"To save your

honour," was the reply. Soon after, the count's col-
lectors raising the subsidy stipulated to be paid to
France, levied more than the necessary sum. The town
magistrates objected; the count and his officers repaired
to Courtray, no doubt to be nearer France. Bruges
sent deputies to expostulate; these the count arrested,
and to prevent the Flemings coming to deliver them,
he set fire to the suburbs and bridges of Courtray.
The flames gained the town; the inhabitants rose in
indignation against the count, and a combat ensued, in
which many perished, John of Flanders amongst them.
In the end the count was made a prisoner with one of
his followers, and committed to the keeping of the citi-
zens of Bruges, while his uncle Robert was chosen count
in his stead. A state of permanent hostility to France
did not, however, suit the Flemings, especially as the
people of Ghent leaned to the French king, and thus
disturbed the accord between the towns of Flanders.
At the demand of Charles the Fair, therefore, the people
of Bruges liberated Louis, on condition of his consent-
ing to acknowledge the liberties and privileges of his
subjects. Louis was no sooner free than he proceeded
to France, made light of his oath, and sought to esta
blish his authority by means of French invasion. To
deprecate and prevent this, the people of Bruges and
Ypres made submission, or appeared to do so; and
promised to pay large sums both to count and king in
order to be left at peace.

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IX.

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IX.

The relations of French and English were amicable during a great portion of the reigns of the sons of Philip the Fair. Edward the Second, who had married Isabella, daughter of that monarch, occupied the throne of England during this time. Affinity at first bound the monarchs of the two countries; but Edward the Second excited such universal contempt and such aversion, even on the part of his queen, that the friendship of the two courts was turned to enmity. Mortimer, one of the English exiles, became a follower of Charles of Valois, and the French court sought an opportunity rather of quarrel than of amity with Edward. The county of Agen had always been a disputed territory. The seigneur of Montpezat built a castle in the vicinity of St. Serdos. He was himself a liege of England; but the French claimed the new castle as on their territory, and occupied it. The Gascon-English, under Montpezat himself, recaptured the castle, hanged the garrison, and then destroyed the walls. The court of France was indignant, the Count of Valois especially, and they marched at the head of an army to avenge the wrong. Agen was first taken. The King of England had not only levied a severe taille upon it, but carried away one of its handsomest women. Agen therefore welcomed and received the French, as did La Réole, where Edmund, Earl of Kent, capitulated, the English preserving merely the towns of Bordeaux, Bayonne, and St. Sever. The war waged by the Valois was more against Edward the Second than against England. The occupation of Guienne by the French troops was made a pretext for attracting the English queen to France; and Mortimer and Isabella, once out of Edward's power, soon prepared an expedition against him. In the height of it, the rumour ran that Edward had caused all the French in his dominions to be arrested. And, in truth, there is a royal order to that effect in Rymer, dated 1316. Charles in consequence ordered all the English

in France to be arrested, and seized their property; "which was done," says the continuator of Nangis, "in one day and hour." It appeared, however, that no French had been seized or ill-treated in England. Charles therefore ordered all the English whom he had taken, and who had no property, to be released, whilst he confiscated the property of such English as happened to be rich. Although, after the success of Isabella and Mortimer in England, Charles the Fair nominally restored Guienne on the payment of a large indemnity, he still retained many fortresses, which served as a grievance afterwards for Edward the Third.

It would appear from the ordonnances and other acts of Charles the Fair that the party of the noblesse, dominant under Louis Hutin, but repressed under Philip the Long, recovered full authority under Charles. The Valois, who put themselves forward as the representatives of the chivalry of the age and as the enemy of the legists, appear predominant. They led the expedition against Guienne, threatened Flanders, and aided Mortimer and Isabella in the struggle which terminated in the murder of Edward the Second. The ordonnances of Charles the Fair do not interfere with the noblesse, except to shield them from the encroachments of the king's baillis: the lords of Auvergne and Brittany obtained especial' immunities of this kind. Although armies were raised for Flemish and for Gascon war, the nobles were apparently not called upon to contribute to them except by feudal service; whilst the Parisians were called upon to keep up a body of 200 men-at-arms, and to levy a tax on sales to meet this expenditure. Towns which had not the privileges of communes, and

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IX.