“Under Louis XI., Juvenal des Ursins, in his harangue, addresses the deputies of the third by the title of burghers and inhabitants of the good towns.  At the States of Tours, the spokesman of the estates, John de Rely, says, the people of the common estate, the estate of the people.  The special memorial presented to Charles VIII. by the three orders of Languedoc likewise uses the word people.

“It is in Masselin’s report and the memorial of grievances presented in 1485 that I meet for the first time with the expression third estate (tiers-etat).  Masselin says, ’It was decided that each section should furnish six commissioners, two ecclesiastics, two nobles, and two of the third estate (duos ecclesiasticos, duos nobiles, et duos tertii status.)’ (Documents inedits sur l’Histoire de France; proces-verbal de Masselin, p. 76.) The commencement of the chapter headed Of the Commons (du commun) is, ’For the third and common estate the said folks do represent . . .’ and a few lines lower, comparing the kingdom with the human body, the compilers of the memorial say, ’The members are the clergy, the nobles, and the folks of the third estate. (Ibid. after the report of Masselin, memorial of grievances, p. 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