XXVI Inaugural Address. 
lays and expenses to which his subjects had been, and yet 
were obliged to submit, in consequence of the confusion, 
obscurity and uncertainty which pervaded the customs of the 
different Provinces and Bailiwicks of his Kingdom ; he com- 
manded the whole to be collected in the manner directed by 
his predecessor, Charles the VII.(1) and by a royal com- 
mission of the same date, Thibault Baillet, President, Fran- 
cois de Morvillier, Counsellor, and Roger Barme, Attor- 
ney-General in the Parliament of Paris, were authorized to 
call together the Counts, Barons, Chastelans, Seigneurs, 
Prelates, Abbots, Chapters, King’s Officers, Advocates and 
Attornies of the city, prevoté and vicomté of Paris, with 
a certain number of respectable citizens, and to lay before 
them the Custom of Paris, asit had then been reduced to 
writing, in an assembly of the three estates, (which had 
been previously held for that purpose,) for such alterations as 
this new assembly of officers and citizens, upon discussion, 
should find requisite.(2) This was, accordingly, done, and 
some changes were made ; and His Majesty having declared, 
in the edict above mentioned, that he sanctioned and ap- 
proved whatever his commissioners and the three estates of 
any Province should, mutually, agree and certify to be the 
customs of that Province,(3) the whole, as it then stood, 
was enregistered and published in the Parliament and Cha- 
telet of Paris, as the edict required, and, thereupon, be- 
came the Law of the Prevoté and Vicomté of Paris.(4) in 
this state it remained until the year 1580, when, in an as- 
sembly of the three estates, in which the celebrated Chris- 
topher De Thou, first President of the Parliament of Paris, 
by virtue of Letters Patent, issued for that purpose by Henry 
the 
(1) Intr. to Ferri¢re, gd. Com. vol. 1. p. 51. 
(2) Intr. to Ferriére, gd. Com. vol. 1. p. 33, 
(3) Ibid. gd. Com. vol, Ist. p. 52, 
(4) Vide Edict of 1510, in Introduction to Ferriére, grand Comment. 
yol. 1. p. 52, and theconclusion of the Procés Verbal of the Redaction 
oi the Custom of Paris, ibid. p, 50, 
