A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [108]
Floors were strewn in summer with fragrant herbs and grasses and at other times by rushes or straw changed four times a year, or once a year in poorer homes, by which time it was filled with fleas and rank with dog droppings and refuse. A well-off merchant scattered violets and other flowers on his floor before a dinner party and decorated his walls and table with fresh greens bought in the market at early morning.
Rooms were few, servants slept where they could, privacy was nonexistent, which may have increased irritability. Whether it hampered or facilitated seduction is an open question. The two Cambridge students in Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale were conveniently enabled to enjoy the favors of the Miller’s wife and daughter because they were put to bed in the same room with the family. Even in greater homes guests slept in the same room with host and hostess.
Such was the Third Estate of Paris, from the poorest workman to the richest magnate, whom Marcel tried to mobilize in his struggle against the Dauphin. To make him submit, the Provost began to use the threat of strikes and popular violence. When the Dauphin tried to raise money by another devaluation of the coinage, arousing the wrath of Paris, “the Provost ordered all guilds and trades throughout the city to stop work and everyone to arm.” Forced to cancel the edicts and left without funds, the Dauphin had no recourse but to recall the Estates and return to Paris to meet with them.
At this session, lasting a month from February to March 1357, all the proposed reforms, formulated in writing, were presented in a Grand Ordinance of 61 articles, the Magna Carta of the Third Estate. Written in French rather than Latin as if to emphasize a new voice, the ordinance set forth an ideal of “Good Government” as if its framers were trying to implement Lorenzetti’s delectable vision under that name painted a few years earlier in Siena. In the painted city, citizens in gowns of gentle colors go harmoniously about their business, and mounted men-at-arms pass them by in mutual tolerance and benignity. In a distraught time, the Grand Ordinance was grasping for the same order and decency.
The framers had devised not a grand new scheme of government but rather a set of corrections of existing abuses into which were tossed three political fundamentals. These provided that the monarchy could levy no tax not voted by the Estates, that the Estates General had the right to assemble periodically at their own volition, and that a Grand Council of Thirty-six, twelve from each estate, was to be elected by the Estates to advise the crown.
The purge of King Jean’s councillors was reaffirmed and the members of the new Grand Council “were abjured to forgo the habit of their predecessors of coming late to work and working very little.” All officials were to be at work “every day at sunrise”; they were to be well paid, but lose their pay if they failed to appear early in the morning. The currency was not to be altered without the consent of the Estates, royal and princely expenditures were to be reduced, judicial cases in Parlement were to be speeded up, provincial bailiffs were not to hold two offices or engage in commerce, the summons to military service was to be issued only under specific conditions, nobles were not to leave the country without permission, and their private wars were sternly forbidden. Justice and charity for the poor were to be expedited, their property was not to be confiscated without just price, and their vehicles for never more than one day; the right of villagers to assemble and take arms against robbery and force was affirmed. Finally, the Estates undertook to raise taxes sufficient to pay 30,000 soldiers for one year, but the money was to be administered by the Estates, not through the crown.
Resisting and procrastinating, the Dauphin refused to sign the ordinance until he was browbeaten into it by Marcel’s technique of bringing mobs released from work into the