We must now turn to Philip IV.’s domestic government, [Sidenote: Domestic Government.] which constitutes his sole claim to a place among the great kings of history. His aims were those of his predecessors—those, in fact, of all kings in the later Middle Ages who wished to extend their power. He had to destroy feudalism as a basis of government, or, in the words of a great historian, to ‘eliminate the doctrine of tenure from political life.’ The essential vice of the feudal system was that every man was directly bound only to the immediate lord of whom he held his land; the connection with that lord’s suzerain was purely indirect. Hence came an inevitable tendency to disruption; the tie between vassal and lord was stronger than the indirect tie between the sub-tenant and the king; if a great noble rebelled he could compel his tenants to follow him even against his suzerain. For this system, which had many merits, but was inconsistent with either national unity or a strong government, Philip desired to substitute an organisation in which all Frenchmen, whether tenants-in-chief or sub-tenants, should stand in equal subjection to the law and to the king as the source and guardian of the law. To accomplish this end, an efficient administrative machinery was necessary, and of this the foundations had been laid by Philip’s predecessors. The country was divided into _bailliages_ in the north and _sénéchaussées_ in the south. Philip IV. regulated and extended the functions of the bailiffs and seneschals, and employed them not only to carry out his edicts in the provinces, but also to supply him with that accurate local information without which centralisation is useless and incompetent. Besides these local officials, he [Sidenote: The King’s Court.] had the _cour du roi_ which attended his person. This body, the earliest institution of Capetian France, was originally merely the court of the king’s domain, and consisted of the household officers and the immediate domain tenants. From time to time, however, the king must have had to decide questions concerning the great tenants-in-chief, and by the essential principle of feudalism such questions must be referred to their equals. Hence arose the court of peers, the creation of which is assigned by tradition to Philip Augustus when he summoned John of England to answer for the murder of Arthur of Brittany. Whether this court ever had a separate existence from the domain court is difficult to decide, but if it had, it soon lost it. In the reign of Louis IX. the domain court was transformed, when necessary, into a court of peers by the addition to it of some of the great vassals. At the same time, the court was made more efficient by the introduction of trained lawyers. Under Philip IV. these lawyers became the real managers of the work of justice and administration; and the nobles, though retaining the right of attendance, preferred as a rule to absent themselves from business in