This is the first English edition of a treatise which influenced French thinkers from its publication in 1610 until the end of the ancien regime. Charles Loyseau's Treatise of Orders and Plain Dignities is the third of three major works in which he set out to harmonise with law his fellow citizens' values and behaviour in the crucial sphere of possession and exercise of public power.

In attempting this he developed a thesis, calculated to justify the monarch's overriding role, which illuminates contemporary perceptions of the nature of the state.

Howell A. Lloyd's introduction outlines Loyseau's political thesis on the basis of all three of the author's treatises, and examines in relation to the Treatise of Orders Loyseau's use of literary, historical and legal materials within the philosophical framework that governed his approach. This edition thus not only makes available an important text, but also casts light upon the intellectual milieu of those who administered early-modern France.