The King's Bench - Bailiwick Magistrates and Local Governance in Normandy, 1670-1740 (Hardcover)

An examination of kings' courts and lords' courts in Normandy that opens a new chapter in the debate over absolutism, sovereignty, and the nature of the state in early modern France. 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 crowncourts 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. Zoe A. Schneider has taught at Georgetown University and with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

General

Imprint:	University of Rochester Press
Country of origin:	United States
Series:	Changing Perspectives on Early Modern Europe
Release date:	December 2008
First published:	2008
Authors:	Zoe A. Schneider (Royalty Account)
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 27mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover - Cloth over boards
Pages:	340
ISBN-13:	978-1-58046-292-1
Categories:	Books > Humanities > History > World history > 1500 to 1750 Books > Humanities > History > European history > General Books > History > European history > General Books > History > World history > 1500 to 1750
LSN:	1-58046-292-8
Barcode:	9781580462921

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