nobles were the members of the second estate.
nobles were the members of the second estate.
who are the members of the second estate?
nobles
the best known system is the french "ancien régime" (old regime), a three-estate system used until the french revolution (1789–1799). monarchy was for the king and the queen and this system was made up of clergy (the first estate), nobles (the second estate), and peasants and bourgeoisie (the third estate). in some regions, notably scandinavia and russia, burghers (the urban merchant class) and rural commoners were split into separate estates, creating a four-estate system with rural commoners ranking the lowest as the fourth estate. furthermore, the non-landowning poor could be left outside the estates, leaving them without political rights. in england, a two-estate system evolved that combined nobility and clergy into one lordly estate with "commons" as the second estate. this system produced the two houses of parliament, the house of commons and the house of lords. in southern germany, a three-estate system of nobility (princes and high clergy), knights, and burghers was used. in scotland, the three estates were the clergy (first estate), nobility (second estate), and shire commissioners, or "burghers" (third estate), representing the bourgeois, middle class, and lower class. the estates made up a scottish parliament.
estates of the realm
these exemptions, as well as the right to wear a sword and their coat of arms, encouraged the idea of a natural superiority over the commoners that was common through the second estate, and as long as any noble was in possession of a fiefdom, they could collect a tax on the third estate called feudal dues, which would allegedly be for the third estate's protection (this only applied to serfs and tenants of farmland owned by the nobility). overall, the second estate had vast privileges that the third estate did not possess, which in effect protected the second estate's wealth and property, while hindering the third estate's ability to advance. the reforms proposed by turgot and argued against in the protests of the parlement of paris conflicted with the second estates' interests to keep their hereditary privileges, and was the first step toward reform that seeped into the political arena. turgot's reforms were unpopular among the commoners as well, who saw the parlements as their best defense against the power of the monarchy.
parlement