The Politics of the Parlement of Paris in 1525

Historians of the Parlement of Paris agree that by the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century the court had developed political interests and ambitions of its own. During this time procedures for the registration of royal legislation in the Parlement and questions of the allimportant right of remonstrance by the court were finally settled. Such activity must already have been well established for the criticism and opposition of the magistracy to have acquired formalized procedures. And if so, the magistrates must have already formulated beliefs or principles of some sort upon which they grounded their criticism and resistance. In other words, the right of remonstrance is itself evidence that the Parlement did have political interests and ambitions.l Precisely what those interests and ambitions were is less obvious than the deduction that they must have existed. No one, however, seems to doubt that in general what the magistrates wanted was to preserve a state of equilibrium within the government, wherein the king's authority was to be tempered by the wisdom and counsel of the Parlement so that it would never be exercised arbitrarily. Such a balance was to be a precarious one indeed. It could be maintained only as long as kings agreed to tolerate the criticism and obstructionism

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