(3) The most famous of the three bodies was the great law-court of France, the Parliament of Paris. Its functions correspond to those of the courts of King’s Bench and Common Pleas in England, but its peculiar history arises from the maintenance of a corporate unity and authority which the English judges never possessed. Philip IV. not only gave to the Parliament a separate existence, he also fixed its sessions in Paris, and organised its three earliest sub-divisions. The _chambre des requêtes_ decided the lesser cases of first instance brought directly before the Parliament. The _chambre des enquêtes_ received and prepared for further consideration all appeals from lower courts. The _grande chambre_ was the largest and most important of the sub-divisions, and is often called the Parliament by itself. In it the peers retained the right of sitting down to the Revolution, but they only appeared on formal occasions. The _grande chambre_ decided all important appeals, and cases of first instance concerning the peers, the royal officers, and the members of the sovereign courts. At first the Parliament only met twice a year, at Easter and All Saints. But the two sessions proved insufficient to discharge the growing business of the court, and, later in the century, it was made a permanent court, and its members were appointed for life or during the royal pleasure. In addition to its judicial work, the Parliament had to register all royal edicts, treaties of peace, and other formal documents. This was originally a duty rather than a right; and it was not till much later that the Parliament based upon this practice a claim to remonstrate against, or even to veto, the edicts of the king. The organisation of this administrative machinery is the greatest achievement of Philip IV.’s domestic government. [Sidenote: The States-General.] But his reign is also noteworthy for the origin of the States-General, which at one time promised to become the basis of a constitutional system of government such as was our Parliament established in England, but was ultimately crushed into insignificance by the crown which had created it as a mere instrument to serve its own ends. The first meeting was held in 1302, when Philip wished to parade the unanimity of his subjects in opposing the pretensions of Boniface VIII. They were summoned again in 1308 to condemn the Templars, and in 1314 to support the king in a renewed war with Flanders. Philip may have found a model for these assemblies either in the provincial estates of Languedoc and Brittany, or in the Cortes of Castile and Aragon, but it is more than probable that he was inspired by the example of his great contemporary, Edward I. of England, who in 1295 had summoned the famous ‘model parliament,’ and had himself in 1301 obtained a protest against the papal claims from a parliament at Lincoln.