"The three estates" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the government hardly damaged popular liberties as embodied in the constitution of the Cortes of Castile. When Charles became king this body was not, like other parliaments, ordinarily a representative assembly of the three estates, but consisted merely of deputies of eighteen Castilian cities. Only on special occasions, such as a coronation, were nobles and clergy summoned to participate. Its great {429} power was that of granting taxes, though ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... 1581 obtained this marquisate by purchase; and his heirs, through its possession, continued to exercise great influence in the Provincial Estates. As Philip William, Prince of Orange, was in Madrid, Maurice sat in the assembly as "first noble" in his place. In Utrecht the three Estates were represented, i.e. the nobles, the towns (four in number) and the clergy. The representatives of the clergy were, however, chosen no longer from the Chapter but from the possessors of what had been Church ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... capacious and many actors played out divers roles. Here stood the scroll-bearing angels on either side of a living representation of Christ. In the background clustered three separate groups of people representing, respectively, the three Estates. Above their heads more inscriptions were to be read.[2] "All the nations desire to see the face of Solomon," "Behold him desired by all races," "Master, look on us, thy people," ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... the misery of the country, gave to the cities of France an opportunity which one great man, Etienne Marcel, provost of the traders at Paris, was not slow to grasp. He fortified the capital and armed the citizens; the civic clergy made common cause with him; and when the Dauphin Charles convoked the three Estates at Paris, it was soon seen that the nobles had become completely discredited and powerless. It was a moment in which a new life might have begun for France; in vain did the noble order clamour for war and taxes,—they to do the war, with what skill and success all men now knew, ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... delivered only so late as the last session of Parliament, declared his desire and determination to uphold the present settlement of the 'three estates of the realm, viz.—King, Lords, and Commons.' Now, his Gracious Majesty is no more an estate of the realm than Lord John Russell himself. The three estates of the realm are the estate of the Lords Spiritual, the estate of the Lords Temporal, and the estate of the Commons. An estate is a popular class established into a political order. It is a section of the nation invested for the public and common good with certain powers ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... a separate constitutional element in the realm, even the separate influence of the Church, had fallen more and more into decay. For their irregular and individual action was gradually substituted the legal and continuous action of the three Estates; and now that the assembly of the estates practically ceased it was too late to revive the older checks which in earlier days had fettered the action of the Crown. Nor was the growth of Parliament the only cause for the ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... years the conflict raged between the crown and the parliament, both the king and Bismarck being inflexible; and the lower House was equally obstinate in refusing to grant the large military supplies demanded. At last, Bismarck dissolved the Chambers, and the king declared that as the Three Estates could not agree, he should continue to do his duty by Prussia without regard to "these pieces of paper called constitutions." The next four sessions of the Chamber were closed in the same manner. Bismarck ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... Rump assembled) the three estates, But oh! how the citizens hugg'd him for breaking down their gates, For tearing up their posts and chaynes, and for clapping up their mates (54) (When they saw that he brought them plasters for their broken pates). From a ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... all States-General have done as good as nothing, why should these do more? The Commons, indeed, look dangerous; but on the whole is not revolt, unknown now for five generations, an impossibility? The Three Estates can, by management, be set against each other; the Third will, as heretofore, join with the King; will, out of mere spite and self-interest, be eager to tax and vex the other two. The other two ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... subjects. It is also true that these requests furnished the occasion to the Commons to stipulate for redress of grievances. But the grievances so redressed had no relation to the laws of the Realm. These laws were made or altered by the free assent of the three estates in whom the law-making power vested by the Constitution. The grievances of which the Commons sought redress, whether from Tudor, Plantagenet or Stuart, were the improper use of prerogatives, the granting ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... and the ideal Whig (and some such there have really been) agreed in the necessity and benefit of an exact balance of the three estates: but the Tory was more jealous of the balance being deranged by the people; the Whig, of its being deranged by the Crown. But this was a habit, a jealousy only; they both agreed in the ultimate preservation of the balance; and accordingly they might each, under certain circumstances, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... the experiment of calling the States-General. They met on May 4, 1789, and instantly an administrative system, which no longer rested upon a social centre of gravity, crumbled, carrying the judiciary with it. At first the three estates sat separately. If this usage had continued, the Clergy and the Nobles combined would have annulled every measure voted by the Commons. For six weeks the Commons waited. Then on June 10, the Abbe Sieyes said, "Let us cut the cable. ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... of the Estates in England was akin to that of those in North France and especially in the Netherlands; on this rests the sympathy which the enterprises of Edward III and Henry V met with; for it was indeed the feeling of these centuries, that the members of any one of the three Estates felt themselves quite as closely bound to the members of the same Estate in other lands as to their own countrymen of the other Estates. There was but one Church, one Science, one Art in Europe: one and the same mental horizon enclosed the different ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... pronounced that their case was good and their argument bad. Twice they gave the enemy an advantage. When they saw the clergy waver, they resolved, by their usual majority of 197 to 44, that each order possessed the right of nullification; so that they would no more yield to the separate vote of the three Estates than to their united vote. Evidently the country would support those who denied the veto and were ready to overrule it, against those who gave no hope that anything would be done. Again, when they declined the Government proposals, they isolated themselves, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the realm—clergy, nobility, and third estate—each sent an equal number of representatives, who were expected to consider not the interests of the nation but the special interests of the particular social class to which they respectively belonged. Accordingly, the deputies of the three estates did not sit together, or vote as a single body. The members of each group first came to an agreement among themselves and then a single vote was cast for ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson |
