.' (_La Noue, Discours,_ p.

541); and 'clerks and deputies for the third estate, same for the estate of labor (laborers).' (_Coustumier general,_ t.i.

p.

335.) In the fifteenth century, or at the end of the fourteenth, in the poems of Eustace Deschamps, I have-- '_Prince, dost thou yearn for good old times again?
In good old ways the Three Estates restrain._' "At date of fourteenth century, in Du Cange, we read under the word status, '_Per tres status concilii generalis Praelatorum, Baronum, nobilium et universitatum comitatum._' According to these documents, I think it is in the fourteenth century that they began to call the three orders _tres status_, and that it was only in the sixteenth century that they began to speak in French of the _tiers estat_ (third estate).

But I cannot give this conclusion as final, seeing that it is supported only by the documents I consulted for my dictionary." M.Picot replied on the 3d of October, 1871, "It is certain that acts contemporary with King John frequently speak of the 'three estates,' but do not utter the word _tiers-etat_ (third estate).