ABSOLUTE POWER IN EUROPE Estates-General were no longer convened The Parle- ment of Paris, which at its origin was only a corps of judges appointed by the king, then tried to intervene in the government. When the king made a new ordi- nance it had to be inscribed on the registers of the parlement; that was a means of preserving it, and of making it public. Parlement got into the habit of mak- ing remonstrances to the king before the registration was ordered. But the king was not obliged to listen to the remonstrance; if he wanted an ordinance passed it was sufficient for him to go to parlement in person (having the parlement sit in the presence of the king), that is, give the order for registration under his own eyes. Louis XI. had, in 1462, forced parlement to declare "that it was instituted by the king for the purpose of administering justice and that it did not have any control over either war, the finances, the government by the king, or the great princes/' In 1516, when the delegates of the Parlement of Paris came to protest against the Concordat, Francis I. answered: "I am the king, I intend to be obeyed: to- morrow, carry my orders to my parlement in Paris." No authority in France could henceforth prevent the king from governing in a despotic manner. Absolutism of the King of Spain.—The King of Spain had forbidden the great lords to take into their service any armed men: he alone had an army. He had a treasury supplied by the taxes, which were paid to him by the rich towns of the Low Countries,, and (since the middle of the sixteenth century) by the mines of Mexico and Peru. He had besides an instru- ment of domination which was lacking to all the other