The parlement was at the same time the court of peers (tour des pairs). This had as its origin the old principle according to which every vassal had the right to be tried by his peers, i.e., by the vassals holding fiefs from the same lord, who sat in judgment with that lord as their president. This, it is well known, resulted in the formation of the ancient college of the peers of France, which consisted of six laymen and six ecclesiastics. But although in strict logic the feudal causes concerning them should have been judged by them alone, they could not maintain this right in the curia regis; the other persons sitting in it could also take part in judging causes which concerned the peers. Finally the peers of France, the number of whom was increased in course of time by fresh royal creations of peerages, became ex officio members of the parlement ; they were the hereditary councillors, taking the oath as official magistrates, and, if they wished, sitting and having a deliberative function in the parlement. In suits brought against them personally or involving the rights of their peerage they had the right of being judged by the parlement, the other peers being present, or having been duly summoned.
While maintaining its unity, the parlement had been subdivided into several chambres or sections. In the first place there was the Grand Chambre, which represented the primi tive parlement. 'ro it was reserved the judgment in certain impor tant cases, and in it a peculiar procedure was followed, known as oral, though it admitted certain written documents. Even after the offices of the parlement had become legally saleable the coun cillors could only pass from the other chambers into the grand chambre by order of seniority. The chambres des enquetes and des requetes originated at the time when it became customary to draw up lists for each session of the parlement. The enqueteurs or auditeurs of the parlement had at first been an auxiliary staff of clerks to whom were entrusted the inquests ordered by the parle ment. But later, when the institution of the appeal was fully de veloped, and the procedure before the various jurisdictions be came a highly technical matter, above all when it admitted written evidence, the documents connected with other inquests also came before the parlement. A new form of appeal grew up side by side with the older form, which had been mainly an oral procedure, namely the appeal by writing (appel par ecrit). In order to judge these new appeals the parlement had above all to study written documents, the inquests which had been made and written down under the jurisdiction of the court of first instance. The duty of the enqueteurs was to make an abstract of the written documents and report on them. Later the reporters (rapporteurs) were admitted to judge these questions together with a certain number of members of the parlement, and from 1316 onwards these two kinds of members formed together a chambre des enquetes. As yet, no doubt, the rapporteur only gave his opinion on the case which he had prepared, but after 1336 all those who formed part of the chamber were put on the same footing, taking it in turn to report and giving judgment as a whole. For a long time, however, the grand chambre received all cases, then sent them to the chambre des enquetes with directions ; before it too were argued questions arising out of the inquiry made by the chambre des enquetes to the decisions of which it gave effect and which it had the power to revise. But one by one it lost all these rights, and in the i6th
century they are no longer heard of. Several chambres des en quetes were created after the first one, and it was they who had the greater part of the work.
The chambre des requetes was of an entirely different nature. At the beginning of the 14th century a certain number of those who were to hold the session of the parlement were set apart to receive and judge the petitions (requetes) on judicial questions which had been presented to the king and not yet dealt with. This eventually led to the formation of a chamber, in the strict sense of the word, the requetes du palais. But this became purely a jurisdiction for privileged persons; before it (or before the requetes de l'hotel, as the case might be) were brought the civil suits of those who enjoyed the right of committimus. The cham bre des requetes had not supreme jurisdiction, but appeals from its decisions could be made to the parlement proper. The parlement had also a criminal chamber, that of La Tournelle, which was not legally created until the i6th century, but was active long before then. It had no definite membership, but the conseillers lais served in it in turn.
Originally there was only one parle ment, that of Paris, as was indeed logical, considering that the parlement was simply a continuation of the curia regis, which, like the king, could only be one. But the exigencies of the administra tion of justice led to the successive creation of a certain number of provincial parlements. Their creation, moreover, was generally dictated by political circumstances, after the incorporation of a province in the domain of the Crown. Sometimes it was a question of a province which, before its annexation, possessed a superior and sovereign jurisdiction of its own, and to which it was desired to preserve this advantage. Or else it might be a province forming part of feudal France, which before the annexation had had a superior jurisdiction from which the Crown had endeavoured to institute an appeal to the parlement of Paris, but for which after the annexation it was no longer necessary to maintain this appeal, so that the province might now be given a supreme court, a parle ment. Sometimes an intermediate regime was set up between the annexation of the province and the creation of its provincial parle ment, under which delegates from the parlement of Paris went and held assizes there. Thus were created successively the parlements of Toulouse, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Dijon, Rouen, Aix, Rennes, Pau, Metz, Douai, Besancon and Nancy. From 1762 to 1771 there was even a parlement for the principality of Dombes. The provincial parlements reproduced on a smaller scale the organization of that of Paris ; but they did not combine the functions of a court of peers. They each claimed to possess equal powers within their own province. There were also great judicial bodies exercising the same functions as the parlements, though without bearing the name, such as the Conseil souverain of Alsace at Colmar, the Conseil superieur of Roussillon at Perpignan; the provincial coun cil of Artois had not the supreme jurisdiction in all respects.