The years immediately preceding the political crisis of 1770–1 have been neglected by historians of the Parlement of Paris. Understandably, they have concentrated upon the events which led to the reforms of chancellor de Maupeou, and subsequently the activities of the magistrates between 1767 and 1770 have been overlooked. Instead, it has become common practice to speak in general terms of the mounting opposition of the sovereign courts at the end of the 1760s. In March 1766, Louis XV had accused the Parisian judges of attempting to form a ‘confederation of resistance’, and Maupeou used similar language to justify his reforms in 1771. Not surprisingly, historians sympathetic to those measures have assumed that the coup of 1771 was a reaction to the growing strength of the sovereign courts, an interpretation which implies that the judges were partially responsible for their own downfall. In reality the origins of the affair were more complicated. By the late 1760s, the Parlement of Paris had not been transformed into a dangerous body which needed to be tamed. Instead, the court had preserved the traditional conservatism of a corporate institution predominantly concerned with the need to defend its privileges and jurisdiction. There was little reason to suspect that a member of the Parlement during 1750 would have found the atmosphere dramatically altered had he returned to his place in 1770 after a long absence. It was the political crisis brought about by the Brittany affair which led to the exile of the Parisian magistrates.

Yet the ideas developed by the judges, and by the parti janséniste in particular, during the 1750s were not abandoned.