BASOQUE, BASOGUE and BAZOUGES, a French gild of clerks, from among whom legal representatives (procureurs) were recruited. This gild was very ancient, even older than the gild of the procureurs, with which it was often at variance. It dated, no doubt, from the time when the profession of procureur (pro curator, advocate or legal representative) was still free in the sense that persons rendering that service to others when so per mitted by the law were not yet public and ministerial officers. For this purpose there was established near each important juridical centre, a group of clerks, that is to say, of men skilled in law who at first would probably fill indifferently the roles of representative or advocate. Such was the origin of the Basoche of the parlement of Paris, which naturally formed itself into a gild, like other professions and trades in the middle ages. But this organization eventually became disintegrated, dividing up into more specialized bodies : that of the advocates, whose history then begins ; and that of legal representatives, whose profession was regularized in 1344, and speedily became a saleable charge. The remnant of the original clerks constituted the new Basoche, which thenceforward consisted only of those who worked for the procureurs, the richer clerks aspiring to attain the position of procureur. They all, however, retained some traces of their original conditions. The Basoche had besides its maitres des requetes, a grand court-crier, a referendary, an advocate-general, a procureur-general, a chaplain, etc. In early days, and until the first half of the i 6th century, it was organized in companies in a military manner and held periodical reviews or parades (mon tres), sometimes taking up arms in the king's service in time of war. Of this there survived later only an annual cavalcade, when the members of the Basoche went to the royal forest of Bondy to cut the maypole, which they afterwards set up in the court yard of the Palais. We hear also of satirical and literary enter tainments given by clerks of the Palais de Justice, and of the moralities played by them in public, which form an important element in the history of the national theatre; but at the end of the i 6th century these performances were restricted to the great hall of the Palais.
To the last the Basoche retained two principal prerogatives: (I) In order to be recognized as a qualified procureur, it was necessary to have gone through one's "stage" in the Basoche, to have been entered by name for ten years on its register. (2) The Basoche had judiciary powers recognized by the law. It had disciplinary jurisdiction over its members and decided personal actions in civil law brought by one clerk against another or by an outsider against a clerk. The Chatelet of Paris had its special Basoche, which claimed to be older even than that of the Palais de Justice, and there was contention between them as to certain rights. The clerks of the procureurs at the tour des comptes of Paris had their own Basoche of great antiquity, called the "empire de Galilee." The Basoche of the Palais de Justice had in its ancient days the right to create provostships in localities within the jurisdiction of the parlement of Paris, and thus there sprang up a certain number of local Basoches. Others were inde pendent in origin ; among such being the "regency" of Rouen and the Basoche of the parlement of Toulouse.