parliament, a privilege which was granted in 1264 to the principal towns of the kingdom. [Illustration: Fig. 24.--Philip III., called “the Bold,” in Royal Costume.--From a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century (Burgundian Library, Brussels).] In France, about the same period, the industrial and trading bourgeoisie had seats in the privy council of St. Louis, and, advancing in letters and science, it gradually obtained possession of all the chairs at the university. As early as the reign of Philip the Bold (Fig. 24), it occupied all the higher positions in the judicature, and hence it assumed a place in the great bailiwicks and parliaments, from which the feudal nobility did not condescend to oust it, and which, after a time, enabled it to offer a successful resistance to the abuse of power on the part of this same nobility, whose authority steadily diminished. Admitted by Philippe-le-Bel to the general assemblies of the nation and to the sessions of the states-general, the bourgeoisie became one of the states, an order of the kingdom, that is, the _tiers-état_. It absorbed the offices pertaining to the general administration and to finance, it furnished the lower orders of the clergy with most of their distinguished representatives, and the municipalities with the most gifted of their magistrates; it acquired the right of purchasing offices which carried nobility with them, of possessing seignorial domains with high and petty justice, and thus it forced its way like ivy into the crevices of the feudal edifice, which stone by stone crumbled to pieces. Philippe-le-Bel, surnamed the _King of the Lawyers_--who helped him in a material degree to carry out his designs--showed himself, as a natural consequence, the King of the Commons (_tiers-état_), and the secret enemy of the Church and the nobility. The latter, valiant and chivalrous, but devoid of forethought, rushing headlong into every kind of adventure, and caring only for deeds of daring and warlike achievements, regardless of their material interests, gradually allowed themselves to be divested of a considerable part of their domains by the bourgeoisie, who lent them money upon mortgage, and by the _voués_ or _procureurs_, who ruined them. The decadence of their wealth dated from the First Crusade, when they encumbered their estates to pay the expenses of distant expeditions, which they undertook almost entirely at their own cost; and when they wished to recover possession of the properties which they had handed over to some third party, they found them loaded with fresh debts, which had been contracted during their absence, and producing but nominal revenues for want of hands to cultivate the soil. They then were obliged to sell a portion of the property, and that at a great loss. The only resource remaining was the concession of their feudal privileges, and in this way the nobility lost the right of coining money and of exercising justice, while the