the legacy of the parliament of paris same time (as the famous lawyer Jean le Coq at the end of the fourteenth century, another famous advocate in the first half of the fourteenth century was Guillaume du Breuil, who wrote a private work about the rules of procedure before the Parlement). This institution of king’s advocates shows that there was an early separation between the court, judging on the behalf of the king and the king as a plaintiff, whose interests were defended by an advocate who was not a member of the court. However, it could happen that a king’s advocate could be nominated as a “master” or “counsellor”, which means as a judge. This was, during this decisive period of the fourteenth century, the beginning of a French specific institution, the one of the “public ministry” who had to protect the royal interests (especially in financial or domain affairs, even to control some too generous acts coming from the royal chancery) and to prosecute criminals with the first developments of the inquisitorial procedure. From the 1330s or the 1340s, there was a Procureur general du roi as the head of this public ministry that had to act as a procurator (a kind of attorney for all the acts of procedure) and to direct the king’s advocates. All these groups remained very fluid until one 1345 ordinance (of Philippe VI, just at the beginning of the Hundred Years War between the kingdoms of France and England) that decided that the judges of the Parlement had not to be renewed every year (there was now one annual session beginning in November after the traditional feast of Saint Martin), but that they constituted a stable group of judges with regular payments from the king (which did not mean the impossibility for the king to dismiss some judges, as it happened in 1357).6 During the reigns of Charles V(1364-1380) and Charles VI (1380-1422), the members of the Parlement were “elected”, the king choosing between three candidates presented by the court. The decline of the election began under the reign of Charles VII (1422-1461) and Louis XI (who promised the irremovable character of judges in 1467) and triumphed at the beginning of the sixteenth century, as the “venality” of the judicature offices progressed in the Parlement as in the other parts of the judiciary and of the royal administration. 6 Autrand, Françoise 1981 p. 22. 120
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