Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/551

THE GROWTH OF ROYAL POWER IN FRANCE 501 Hitherto there had been provincial estates of Normandy, Artois, Vermandois, Burgundy, and so on; now, The Estates on at least three occasions during his reign, Philip General the Fair summoned the Estates General: in 1302 to secure general support in his conflict with Pope Boniface VIII, in 1308 against the Knights Templars, and in 1314 to secure funds for a war in Flanders. To this gathering were sum- moned the tenants-in-chief lay or clerical, representatives of the towns, and also of the cathedral chapters and monas- teries. The assembly divided, not into Lords and Commons, but into the three estates of clergy, nobility, and townsmen. The session usually lasted only a day and there was no general debate, but each estate was free to submit a cahier or list of grievances for the king to remedy if he saw fit. In 1 3 14 the nobles and towns joined in opposition to a gabelle which fell heavily upon both seller and buyer, and secured its withdrawal and the promise of improvement in the coinage. But the Estates General was not destined to gain the control of taxation and legislation possessed by the English Parliament. There was no obligation upon the king to call it; he could deal instead with different provincial estates separately and keep the opposition to himself di- vided. Moreover, when the Estates General did meet, there was a lack of common feeling and interests and action among the three estates which seldom agreed upon any united program. Perhaps this was because there were not great lay lords and bishops grouped together in one body as in the English House of Lords, nor knights and townsmen associated together as in the English House of Commons. But we must also remember the greater chasm between feudalism and communes in France, the greater size of the country, and the greater diversity of its parts in their local customs and recent history. It should be added that the so- called Estates General usually included representatives of northern and central France only; the southern provinces insisted upon making their grants through their own Estates of Languedoc. The meetings of the Estates General during the reign of