I have selected the transaction which I am about to describe from amongst a number of others, in order to give an example of some of the forms followed by the parochial administration, to show how dilatory they were, and to give a picture of the General Assembly of a parish during the eighteenth century. The matter in hand was the repairs to be done to the parsonage and steeple of a rural parish, that of Ivry, in the Île-de-France. The question was, to whom to apply to get these repairs done, how to determine on whom the expense should fall, and how to procure the sum which was needed. 1. Memorial from the curé to the Intendant, setting forth that the steeple and the parsonage are in urgent need of repairs; that his predecessor had added useless buildings to the parsonage, and thus entirely altered and spoiled it; that the inhabitants, having allowed this to be done, were bound to bear the expense of restoring it to a proper condition, and, if they chose, to claim the money from the heirs of the last curé. 2. Ordonnance of the Intendant (29th August, 1747), directing that the syndic shall make it his business to convoke a meeting to deliberate on the necessity of the operations demanded. 3. Memorial from the inhabitants, setting forth that they consent to the repairs of the parsonage but oppose those of the steeple, seeing that the steeple is built over the chancel, and that the curé, who is the great-tithe-owner, is liable for the repairs of the chancel. [By a decree in council of the end of the preceding century (April, 1695) the person in receipt of the great tithes was bound to repair the chancel, the parishioners being charged only with keeping up the nave.] 4. Fresh ordonnance of the Intendant, who, in consequence of the contradictory statements he has received, sends an architect, the Sieur Cordier, to inspect and report upon the parsonage and the steeple, to draw up a statement of the works and to make an inquiry. 5. _Procès-verbal_ of all these operations, by which it appears that at the inquiry a certain number of landowners of Ivry appeared before the commissioner sent by the Intendant, which persons appeared to be nobles, burghers, and peasants of the place, and inscribed their declarations for or against the claim set up by the curé. 7. Fresh ordonnance of the Intendant, to the effect that the statements drawn up by the architect whom he had sent shall be communicated to the landowners and inhabitants of the parish at a fresh general meeting to be convoked by the syndic. 8. Fresh Parochial Assembly in consequence of this ordonnance, at which the inhabitants declare that they persist in their declarations.