The term _Roi_ or _Prince des Sots_ is perhaps the most common one for the new _dominus festi_, and, like _sots_ or _folz_ themselves, is generic. But there are many local variants, as the _Prévôt des Étourdis_ at Bouchain[1333], the _Roi des Braies_ at Laon, the _Roi de l’Epinette_ at Lille, and the _Prince de la Jeunesse_ at St. Quentin[1334]. The _dominus festi_ was as a rule chosen by one or more local guilds or _confréries_ into which the _jeunesse_ were organized for the purpose of maintaining the feast. The fifteenth century was an age of guilds in every department of social life, and the _compagnies des fous_ or _sociétés joyeuses_ are but the frivolous counterparts of religious _confréries_ or literary _puys_. The most famous of all such _sociétés_, that of _l’Infanterie Dijonnaise_ at Dijon, seems directly traceable to the fall of an ecclesiastical Feast of Fools. Such a feast was held, as we have seen, in the ducal, afterwards royal, chapel, and was abolished by the _Parlement_ of Dijon in 1552. Before this date nothing is heard of _l’Infanterie_. A quarter of a century later it is in full swing, and the character of its dignitaries and its badges point clearly to a derivation from the chapel feast[1335]. The Dijon example is but a late one of a development which had long taken place in many parts of northern France and Flanders. It would be difficult to assert that a _société joyeuse_ never made its appearance in any town before the ecclesiastical Feast of Fools had died out therein. Occasionally the two institutions overlap[1336]. But, roughly speaking, the one is the inheritor of the other; ‘_La confrérie des sots, c’est la Fête des Fous sécularisée_[1337].’ Amongst the chief of these _sociétés_ are the _Enfants-sans-Souci_ of Paris, the _Cornards_ or _Connards_ of Rouen and Evreux[1338], the _Suppôts du Seigneur de la Coquille_ of Lyons[1339]. The history of these has been written excellently well by M. Petit de Julleville, and I do not propose to repeat it. A few general points, however, deserve attention.