ABSTRACT
During the five hundred years of the Parlemen’s existence, its members always occupied a leading place in society; the nature of their responsibilities made that fact inevitable. The king’s counsellors had been great barons and prelates, and indeed the Parlement never altogether lost its ancient lineage: it remained the sole tribunal before which cases involving peers could be decided and the only one upon whose benches peers and royal princes sat by right. From the fifteenth century, magisterial rank in the Parlement was usually bestowed upon men of more humble origin, whose families had gained success in the law, or in administration, commerce or finance. It is notable that it was especially the senior posts in the Parlement which were becoming family property. The members of the Parlement in Paris were nominated by the duke of Burgundy or the king of England until 1426, when the new regime was sufficiently secure to allow the return of a limited electoral procedure.
