Research Catalog

Title

The king's bench : bailiwick magistrates and local governance in Normandy, 1670-1740 / Zoë A. Schneider.

Author

Schneider, Zoë A., 1961-

Publication

Rochester, NY : University of Rochester Press, 2008.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 326 pages : illustrations, maps; 24 cm.

Summary

"Hidden deep in the countryside of France lay early modern Europe's largest bureaucracy: twenty- to thirty thousand royal bailiwick and seigneurial courts that served more than eighty-five percent of the king's subjects. The crown courts and lords' courts were far more than arenas of litigation, in the modern sense. They had become the nexus of local governance by the middle of the seventeenth century, a rich breeding ground for men who controlled the villages, towns, and bailiwicks of France. Yet even as the centralizing state was reaching its zenith under Louis XIV, the king's largest permanent bureaucracy became increasingly alienated and cut adrift from the crown, many decades before the French Revolution." "In The King's Bench, Zoe Schneider vividly brings to life the teeming world of the local courts, with their magistrates and jailers, townspeople and peasants. Together they contested that vital border where the private world of families and property collided with the public commonwealth. Schneider chronicles the transformation of local governance after the mid-seventeenth century, as judges and their courts became the face of public order in the countryside." "With this richly detailed local study of Normandy in the seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries, Zoe Schneider opens a new chapter in the debate over absolutism, sovereignty, and the nature of the state in early modern France."--BOOK JACKET.

Series Statement

Changing perspectives on early modern Europe, 1542-3905

Uniform Title

Changing perspectives on early modern Europe

Subject

• Geschichte 1670-1740
• Courts > France > Normandy > History
• Justice, Administration of > France > History
• Courts
• Justice, Administration of
• Politics and government
• Gerichtsbarkeit
• Grundherrschaft
• König
• Normandy (France) > Politics and government
• France
• France > Normandy
• Frankreich
• Normandie

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 285-314) and index.

Contents

Rex and lex : the problem of legislative sovereignty -- Howling with the wolves -- Officers and gentlemen -- Law and lawyers in the "Empire of Custom" -- The red robe and the Black : common courts and the state -- Villagers and townspeople -- Uncivil acts -- Unruly governors : functions and dysfunctions of the common courts -- Glossary of legal terms.

ISBN

• 9781580462921
• 1580462928

LCCN

2008034069

OCLC

• ocn233937710
• 233937710
• SCSB-8926208

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library