Abonnement : Subscription. Some towns and provinces paid a fixed fee rather than having a tax such as the taille, capitation, or dixième administered by royal agents.

Aides : Excise or sales taxes.

Arrêt du conseil : A legal decision of the King’s Council that was both sovereign and definitive on a point of law.

Arrêt en commandement : A decision made in the presence of the king.

Arrêt simple : A decision that did not require the king’s physical presence.

Assignation : A payment assigned to a particular source of revenue; a promissory note issued by the government against future revenues.

Bailliage (or sénéschaussée) : A royal court of the first instance, or a court of appeals for seigneurial courts. There were several hundred of these courts in France.

Billets des fermes (or des receveurs généraux) : Promissory notes issued by tax farmers or receivers general as individuals.

Billets de monnaie : Promissory notes issued by the mints after 1701; mint bills.

Bourg : A small urban area lacking the walls necessary to make it a town, but recognized by the crown as larger than a village or parish.

Brevet de la taille : A royal letter indicating the amount of revenue expected from the impositions in a generality for the coming year.

Bureau des Finances : The court in each generality that heard cased involving the domain and the accounts of the local comptables.

Caisse : A fund managed independently by a comptable.

Caisse des emprunts : A special fund backed by certain revenues from the General Farms.

Capitation : A head tax established in 1695 and again in 1701 that taxed each person according to social status.

Chambre des comptes : A superior court that heard appeals from legal decisions of the Bureaus des Finances and judged the accounts of the crown’s comptables.

Collecte : The duty to collect and be liable for the parish’s imposition; every taillable was expected to perform this duty when his turn came.

Collecteur de la taille : The person in charge of collecting the impositions from a parish for payment to the taille receiver.

Commission de la taille : A royal letter fixing the expected revenue from the impositions in an election for the coming year.