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 chapters. The Italian plot has for its chief actors, on the one side Spain and the Netherlands, on the other side France, while Savoy and the lesser States of Italy each contribute their share to the action. The internal affairs of Italy have received in the description of the main plot such attention as space permitted, and as was necessary to explain the forces at work. But the internal affairs of France, Spain, and the Netherlands have been left aside. Yet some knowledge of these is required if we are to understand the power exerted by each in the forcible settlement of European questions.

The course of the reform movement in France is related below; the institutions of France are described in the first volume of this History. It remains only to give some account of those internal developments and changes that affected the activity of France as a European power.

In the institutions of France there is little change to record. The absolute monarchy had been already established, and was further developed by the school of legists, who had their head-quarters in the University of Toulouse. At their head was the Chancellor Duprat. Their principles and their action aimed at the continuous extension of the royal power. From the King they received their employment and their reward; to his strength they owed everything. All their efforts were directed to its increase both in State and in Church. In the Church especially the Concordat of 1516 proved a valuable instrument in their hands. The absolute authority of the Crown over the Church is proved by the lavish grants frequently made by the clergy to the King, enforced at need by the seizure of property: and by the proposals to sell clerical lands for the King's benefit put forward in 1561 at St Germain. The clergy then offered willingly 16, 600, 000 livres to avoid this danger, so real did it appear. The old Gallicanism of the Pragmatic died hard, finding its last strongholds in the Parliaments and the Universities; and was not finally defeated until the lit de justice of 1527, which removed all jurisdiction relative to high ecclesiastical office from the Parlement, and gave it to the Grand Conseil. The old Gallicanism was replaced by a new royal Gallicanism, which resented interference with the ecclesiastical affairs of France from beyond the Alps, but placed the Church at the mercy of the King. In consequence of this subjection of the French Church to the King the clergy of France fell into two well-marked divisions: those who held or hoped for rich ecclesiastical promotion from the King, and the poor parochial clergy, who thought and suffered, and whose importance as a political factor will be seen in the Wars of Religion.

Though the general lines remain unaltered, administrative changes can be perceived. The elevation of Jacques de Beaune de Semblançay (1518) to the cognisance of all the King's finances, extraordinary as well as ordinary, shows the desire for some unification; but his fall in 1527