Henry M. Baird · 63 of 379

CHAPTER I · Revenues of the clergy.

The annual revenues of the clergy of France were estimated by a Venetian ambassador, with unsurpassed facilities for obtaining accurate information, at six million crowns of gold, out of the fifteen millions that constituted the total revenues of the kingdom. While the clergy thus absorbed two-fifths of the whole income of France, the king was limited to one million and a half crowns, or just one-tenth, derived from his particular estates.