courts of final appeal, and in some cases used this means of appealing against the decrees of the parlements (_proposition d'erreur, requete civile, pourvoi en revision_). In these cases the king was supposed to judge in person; in reality they were examined by the _maitres des requetes_ and submitted to the royal council (_conseil du roi_), at which the king was always supposed to be present and which had in itself no power of giving a decision. For this purpose there was soon formed a special committee of the council, which was called the _conseil prive_ or _de justice_. At the end of the 15th century, Charles VIII., in order to relieve the council of some of its functions, created a new final court, the _grand conseil_, to deal with a number of these cases. But before long it again became the custom to appeal to the _conseil du roi_, so that the _grand conseil_ became almost useless. The king frequently, by means of _lettres de justice_, intervened in the procedure of the courts, by granting _benefices_, by which rules which were too severe were modified, and faculties or facilities for overcoming difficulties arising from flaws in contracts or judgments, cases at that time not covered by the common law. By _lettres de grace_ he granted reprieve or pardon in individual cases. The most extreme form of intervention by the king was made by means of _lettres de cachet_ (q.v.), which ordered a subject to go without trial into a state prison or into exile. The Church. The condition of the Church changed greatly during this period. The jurisdiction of the _officialites_ was very much reduced, even over the clergy. They ceased to be competent to judge actions concerning the possession of real property, in which the clergy were defendants. In criminal law the theory of the _cas privilegie_, which appears in the 14th century, enabled the royal judges to take action against and judge the clergy for all serious crimes, though without the power of inflicting any penalties but arbitrary fines, the ecclesiastical judge remaining competent, in accordance with the privileges of clergy, to try the offender for the same crime as what was technically called a _delit commun_. The development of jurisprudence gradually removed from the _officialites_ causes of a purely secular character in which laymen only were concerned, such as wills and contracts; and in matrimonial cases their jurisdiction was limited to those in which the _foedus matrimonii_ was in question. For the acquisition of real property by ecclesiastical establishments the consent of the king to the amortizement was always necessary, even in the case of allodial lands; and if it was a case of feudal tenures the king and the direct overlords alone kept their rights, the intermediate lords being left out of the question. Papal encroachments.