Estates General (France) - Origin

Origin

In 1302, expanding French royal power led to a general assembly consisting of the chief lords, both lay and ecclesiastical, and the representatives of the principal privileged towns, which were like distinct lordships. Certain precedents paved the way for this institution: representatives of principal towns had several times been convoked by the king, and under Philip III there had been assemblies of nobles and ecclesiastics in which the two orders deliberated separately. It was the dispute between Philip the Fair and Pope Boniface VIII which led to the States-General of 1302; the king of France desired that, in addition to the Great Officers of the Crown of France, he receive the counsel from the three estates in this serious crisis. The letters summoning the assembly of 1302 are published by M. Georges Picot in his collection of Documents inédits pour servir à l'histoire de France. During the same reign they were subsequently assembled several times to give him aid by granting subsidies. Over time subsidies came to be the most frequent motive for their convocation.

In one sense, the composition and powers of the Estates-General always remained the same. They always included representatives of the First Estate (clergy), Second Estate (the nobility), and Third Estate (commoners: all others), and monarchs always summoned them either to grant subsidies or to advise the Crown, to give aid and counsel. Their composition, however, as well as their effective powers, varied greatly at different times.

In their primitive form in the 14th and the first half of the 15th centuries, the Estates-General had only a limited elective element. The lay lords and the ecclesiastical lords (bishops and other high clergy) who made up the Estates-General were not elected by their peers, but directly chosen and summoned by the king. In the order of the clergy, however, since certain ecclesiastical bodies, e.g. abbeys and chapters of cathedrals, were also summoned to the assembly, and as these bodies, being persons in the moral but not in the physical sense, could not appear in person, their representative had to be chosen by the monks of the convent or the canons of the chapter.

It was only the representation of the Third Estate which was furnished by election. Originally, moreover, the latter was not called upon as a whole to seek representation in the estates. It was only the bonnes villes, the privileged towns, which were called upon. They were represented by elected procureurs, who were frequently the municipal officials of the town, but deputies were often elected for the purpose. The country districts, the plat pays, were not represented. Even within the bonnes villes, the franchise was quite narrow.

It was during the last thirty years of the 15th century that the Estates-General became an entirely elective body and really representative of the whole nation as divided into three parts. This came about through various causes. On the one hand, the nobles and prelates who were summoned were not always inclined to attend the estates, so had themselves represented by an envoy, a procureur, as they had the right to do, and frequently the lords or prelates of the same district chose the same procureur to represent them. On the other hand, the Crown seems at that time to have felt the need of having the consent of representatives really expressing the will and feelings of all the orders, and especially of the Third Estate as a whole. The letters of summons to the Estates-General of 1484 invited the ecclesiastics, nobles, and Third Estate to meet at the chief town of their bailliage or sénéchaussé and elect deputies. An intermediate form had been employed in 1468 when the prelates and lords had still been summoned personally, but the towns had each elected three deputies, an ecclesiastic, a noble and a burgess.

At the estates of 1484 there seems to have been universal and direct suffrage for all the three orders. But the roturiers of the country districts could not in practice avail themselves of this power; so the country communities and small towns spontaneously elected delegates to represent them at the electoral assembly. Thus a system of indirect election arose for the Third Estate which became confirmed and subsequently continued to be used. To a certain extent there were sometimes more than two degrees in the suffrage; the delegates nominated by the country communities would gather together with the electors chosen by the neighbouring little town, and appoint with them new delegates to represent them at the electoral assembly of the bailliage. This ultimately became the system. For the clergy and nobles, the suffrage remained direct; but as a rule only such ecclesiastics were admitted to the assembly of the bailliage as possessed a benefice, and only such lords as had a fief.