669.) "Thus, at the end of the fifteenth century, the expression third estate was constantly employed; but is it not of older date?
There are words which spring so from the nature of things that they ought to be contemporaneous with the ideas they express; their appearance in language is inevitable, and is scarcely noticed there.

On the day when the deputies of the communes entered an assembly, and seated themselves beside the first two orders, the new comer, by virtue of the situation and rank occupied, took the name of third order; and as our fathers used to speak of the third denier (_tiers denier_), and the third day (_tierce journee_), so they must have spoken of the (_tiers-etat_) third estate.
It was only at the end of the fifteenth century that the expression became common; but I am inclined to believe that it existed in the beginning of the fourteenth.
"For an instant I had imagined, in the course of my researches, that, under King John, the ordinances had designated the good towns by the name of third estate.

I very soon saw my mistake; but you will see how near I found myself to the expression of which we are seeking the origin.

Four times, in the great ordinance of December, 1335, the deputies wrest from the king a promise that in the next assemblies the resolutions shall be taken according to the unanimity of the orders 'without two estates, if they be of one accord, being able to bind the _third._' At first sight it might be supposed that the deputies of the towns had an understanding to secure themselves from the dangers of common action on the part of the clergy and noblesse, but a more attentive examination made me fly back to a more correct opinion: it is certain that the three orders had combined for mutual protection against an alliance of any two of them.

Besides, the States of 1576 saw how the clergy readopted to their profit, against the two laic orders, the proposition voted in 1355.