michel de l’hôpital & christophe de thou the chancellorship, he told the Parlement of Paris that the magistrates, as councilors to the king, could help him decide state policies through their advice but that the king never shared with them his indivisible authority. For L’Hôpital, it was the duty of the king’s subjects to observe all royal commands, “his laws, edicts and ordinances” must be obeyed by all, “except for the king alone.”44 The king, the sole legislator, would not accept the courts’ attempts to limit the scope of law by repeated remonstrances. A corollary to the idea that the king alone could make or alter the law is that the law court’s role was to dispense justice according to that law. According to Claude de Seyssel in hisLaMonarchie de France, the law provides limits on the king and the law court performs the duty of the frein de justice.45 But Seyssel’s scheme of the independence of Parlement was not a question of checks and balances but “simply a declaration by the court of the rights of a given party according to law.”46 The court merely applies the law. This was precisely what Chancellor L’Hôpital had in mind. In November 1561, the chancellor reminded the magistrates at the Parlement of Paris that their business was deciding cases between private parties and administering justice.47 It was wrong that the Parlement, deliberating on an edict, “always chopped up the whole thing or tore it in pieces; having presentedremonstrances and learned the wishes of the king, it did the contrary.”48 Some, like himself, thought that this was done out of good intention; others thought that the court transgressed its power.49 The chancellor reminded the judges that remonstrances were always well received by the king but the Parlement must accept the laws made in the king’s council once remonstrances had been duly submitted.50 The Edict of January in 1562 legalized Protestant worship, and the Parlement of Paris was in a full defiance mode. This was the first occasion 44 Discourse of 13 December 1560, at the Estates General in Orléans, in L’Hospital, Michel de and Petris, Loris 2002 p. 395-96. 45 Seyssel, Claude de 1961 p. 117-118. 46 Roelker, Nancy Lyman 1996 p. 68. See also Church, William Farr 1969 p. 27. 47 Discourse of 12 November 1561, at the Parlement of Paris, in L’Hospital, Michel de and Petris, Loris 2002 p. 430. 48 Ibid. p. 431. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 144
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=