Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/59

Rh to take the place to which he is entitled, as doyen of the peers, between the king and the duke of Anjou. Already the train of the duke begins to thrust aside their opponents; threatening cries arise, a scuffle is breaking out when the king prevents it, by doing justice to the claims of the duke of Burgundy.

Even the infractions of solemn forms tended to become forms themselves. It seems that it was more or less a custom for the funeral of a king of France to be interrupted by a quarrel, of which the object was the possession of the utensils of the ceremony. In 1422 the corporation of the “henouars,” or salt-weighers, of Paris, whose privilege it was to carry the king’s corpse to Saint-Denis, came to blows with the monks of the abbey, as both parties claimed the pall covering the bier of Charles VI.

An analogous case occurred in 1461, at the funeral of Charles VII. In consequence of an altercation with the monks, the “henouars” put down the coffin when they have come halfway and refuse to carry it any further, unless they are paid ten pounds Paris. The Lord Grand Master of the Horse quiete them by promising to pay them out of his own pocket, but the delay had been so long that the cortège arrives at Saint-Denis only towards eight at night. After the interment, a new conflict arises with regard to the pall of gold-cloth, between the monks and the Grand Master of the Horse himself.

The great publicity which it was customary to give to all important events in the life of a king, and which survived to the times of Louis XIV, sometimes led to a pitiable breakdown of discipline on the most solemn occasions. At the coronation banquet of 1380, the throng of spectators, guests and servants was such that the constable and the marshal of Sancerre had to serve up the dishes on horseback. At the coronation of Henry VI of England at Paris, in 1431, the people force their way at daybreak into the great hall where the feast was to take place, “some to look on, others to regale themselves, others to pilfer or to steal victuals or other things.” The members of the Parlement and of the University, the provost of the merchants and the aldermen, after having succeeded with great difficulty in entering the hall, find the tables assigned to them occupied by all sorts of artisans. An attempt is made to remove them, “but when they had