pleasure of the King. This clause pleased the Queen for a while, but
when she perceived that it did not prevent the rejecting of almost any
other edict by the common suffrage of the Parliament, she flew into a
passion, and told them plainly that she would have all the edicts,
without exception, fully executed, without any modifications whatsoever.

Not long after this, the Court of Aids, the Chamber of Accounts, the
Grand Council, and the Parliament formed a union which was pretended to
be for the reformation of the State, but was more probably calculated for
the private interest of the officers, whose salaries were lessened by one
of the said edicts. And the Court, being alarmed and utterly perplexed
by the decree for the said union, endeavoured, as much as in them lay, to
give it this turn, to make the people have a mean opinion of it. The
Queen acquainted the Parliament by some of the King's Council that,
seeing this union was entered into for the particular interest of the
companies, and not for the reformation of the State, as they endeavoured
to persuade her, she had nothing to say to it, as everybody is at liberty
to represent his case to the King, but never to intermeddle with the
government of the State.

The Parliament did not relish this ensnaring discourse, and because they
were exasperated by the Court's apprehending some of the members of the
Grand Council, they thought of nothing but justifying and supporting
their decree of union by finding out precedents, which they accordingly
met with in the registers, and were going to consider how to put it in
execution when one of the Secretaries of State came to the bar of the
house, and put into the hands of the King's Council a decree of the
Supreme Council which, in very truculent terms, annulled that of the
union. Upon this the Parliament desired a meeting with the deputies of
the other three bodies, at which the Court was enraged, and had recourse