The king's bench : bailiwick magistrates and local governance in Normandy, 1670-1740 / Zoë A. Schneider.
language: en
creator: Schneider, Zoë A., 1961-
call number: KJW3183.43 .S36 2008
extent: xii, 326 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.
format: Book
publisher: Rochester, NY : University of Rochester Press, 2008.
subject: Courts—France—Normandy—History
subject: Normandy (France)—Politics and government—18th century
subject: Justice, Administration of—France—History
subject: Normandy (France)—Politics and government
genre: History
spatial: France
contents: Rex and lex : the problem of legislative sovereignty
contents: Howling with the wolves
contents: Officers and gentlemen
contents: Law and lawyers in the "Empire of Custom"
contents: The red robe and the Black : common courts and the state
contents: Villagers and townspeople
contents: Uncivil acts
contents: Unruly governors : functions and dysfunctions of the common courts
contents: Glossary of legal terms
author: Schneider, Zoë A., 1961-
created: 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z
date: 2008
abstract: "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.
location: ReCAP KJW3183.43 .S36 2008