1. The arguments in this chapter pertain specifically to the traditional French nobles and not to those who had achieved their noble status through service in royal office—the civil, bureaucratic, or robe nobility. The secondary literature that discusses the various challenges faced by the traditional French nobility during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (including those posed by the robe nobility) is vast. Some of the more important recent monographs include Jonathan Dewald, The Formation of a Provincial Nobility: The Magistrates of the Parlement of Rouen, 1499–1610 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980)
2. James B. Wood, The Nobility of the Election of Bayeux, 1463–1666: Continuity through Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980)
3. William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-CenturyFrance: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985)
4. Arlette Jouanna, Le Devoir de révolte: La Noblesse française et la gestation de l’état moderne (1559–1661) (Paris: Fayard, 1989)
5. J. Russell Major, From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French Kings, Nobles, and Estates (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994)