received back from the king a subsidy of two and a half million
livres. From most of the regular, direct taxes paid by Frenchmen the
Clergy of France was freed. [Footnote: _Revue des questions
historiques_, 1st July, 1890 (L'abbe L. Bourgain, _Contribution du
clerge a l'impot_). Sciout, i. 35. Boiteau, 195. Rambaud,
ii. 44. Necker, _De l'Administration_, ii. 308. The financial
statement given above refers to the Clergy of France only. Its
pecuniary affairs are as difficult and doubtful as those of every part
of the nation at this period, and have repeatedly been made the
subject of confused statement and religious and political
controversy. The Foreign Clergy paid some of the regular taxes, giving
the state about one million livres a year on an income of twenty
million livres. Boiteau, 196.]

The bishops were not subject to the secular tribunals, but other clerks
came under the royal jurisdiction in temporal matters. In spiritual
affairs they were judged by the ecclesiastical courts.

The income of the clergy, had it been fairly distributed, was amply
sufficient for the support of every one connected with the order. It
was, however, divided with great partiality. There were set over the
clergy, both French and foreign, eighteen archbishops and a hundred and
twenty-one bishops, beside eleven of those bishops _in partibus
infidelium_, who, having no sees of their own in France, might be
expected to make themselves generally useful. These hundred and fifty
bishops were very highly, though unequally paid. The bishoprics, with a
very few exceptions, were reserved for members of the nobility, and this
rule was quite as strictly enforced under Louis XVI. as under any of his
predecessors. Nothing prevented the cumulation of ecclesiastical
benefices, and that prelate was but a poor courtier who did not enjoy