Under the two Philips, his successors, this magnificence increased, and descended to the great vassals, who were soon imitated by the knights “bannerets.”  There seemed to be a danger of luxury becoming so great, and so general in all classes of feudal society, that in 1294 an order of the King was issued, regulating in the minutest details the expenses of each person according to his rank in the State, or the fortune which he could prove.  But this law had the fate of all such enactments, and was either easily evaded, or was only partially enforced, and that with great difficulty.  Another futile attempt to put it in practice was made in 1306, when the splendour of dress, of equipages, and of table had become still greater and more ruinous, and had descended progressively to the bourgeois and merchants.

It must be stated in praise of Philip le Bel (Fig. 50) that, notwithstanding the failure of his attempts to arrest the progress of luxury, he was not satisfied with making laws against the extravagances of his subjects, for we find that he studied a strict economy in his own household, which recalled the austere times of Philip Augustus.  Thus, in the curious regulations relating to the domestic arrangements of the palace, the Queen, Jeanne de Navarre, was only allowed two ladies and three maids of honour in her suite, and she is said to have had only two four-horse carriages, one for herself and the other for these ladies.  In another place these regulations require that a butler, specially appointed, “should buy all the cloth and furs for the king, take charge of the key of the cupboards where these are kept, know the quantity given to the tailors to make clothes, and check the accounts when the tailors send in their claims for the price of their work.”

[Illustration:  Fig. 50.—­King Philip le Bel in War-dress, on the Occasion of his entering Paris in 1304, after having conquered the Communes of Flanders.—­Equestrian Statue placed in Notre Dame, Paris, and destroyed in 1772.—­Fac-simile of a Woodcut from Thevet’s “Cosmographie Universelle,” 1575.]

After the death of the pious Jeanne de Navarre, to whom perhaps we must attribute the wise measures of her husband, Philip le Bel, the expenses of the royal household materially increased, especially on the occasions of the marriages of the three young sons of the King, from 1305 to 1307.  Gold, diamonds, pearls, and precious stones were employed profusely, both for the King’s garments and for those of the members of the royal family.  The accounts of 1307 mention considerable sums paid for carpets, counterpanes, robes, worked linen, &c.  A chariot of state, ornamented and covered with paintings, and gilded like the back of an altar, is also mentioned, and must have been a great change to the heavy vehicles used for travelling in those days.