ABSTRACT
As the monarchy was reinforced throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the aristocracy that had a provincial base realized that recalling the Estates General would challenge their local influence, while those at the royal court were helpless. The organization of the monarchy did not provide institutional lines that the nobility might have controlled had they been able to agree on their interests. The dramatic difference between France and Britain in the emergence of local government is, of course, rooted deeply in the constitutional restraints the English aristocracy was able to place on the monarchy from the Magna Carta onward. Whereas in Britain the aristocracy and landed gentry captured control of local administration before the nineteenth century expansion of the state, and their ability to influence the monarchy rested in part on the local services they provided and the local patronage they used to reinforce their control of Parliament.
