It must not be supposed that, in the absence of real communal independence, these towns lacked all internal security.

The kingship was ever fearful lest its local officers should render themselves independent, and remembered what had become in the ninth century of the crown's offices, the duchies and the countships, and of the difficulty it had at that time to recover the scattered remnants of the old imperial authority.

And so the Capetian kings with any intelligence, such as Louis VI., Philip Augustus, St.Louis, and Philip the Handsome, were careful to keep a hand over their provosts, sergeants, and officers of all kinds, in order that their power should not grow so great as to become formidable.

At this time, besides, Parliament and the whole judicial system was beginning to take form; and many questions relating to the administration of the towns, many disputes between the provosts and burghers, were carried before the Parliament of Paris, and there decided with more independence and equity than they would have been by any other power.

A certain measure of impartiality is inherent in judicial power; the habit of delivering judgment according to written texts, of applying laws to facts, produces a natural and almost instinctive respect for old-acquired rights.