Note 884 — Chapter X
Reading edition
La Planche, ubi supra. An assembly of notables was, as the term imports, a body consisting, not of representatives of the three orders, regularly summoned under the forms observed in the holding of the States General, but of the most prominent men of the kingdom, arbitrarily selected and invited by the crown to act as its advisers on some extraordinary emergency. "Telles assemblées," says Agrippa d'Aubigné, "ont esté appelées petits estats." Hist. univ., i. 96.