The convening of the Assembly of Notables and the prolonged conflict between the government and the Parlement of Paris gave rise to a ferment of discussion throughout France during 1787 and 1788. This increased after the publication of the arrêt du conseil on 8 August 1788 which gave 1 May 1789 as the date for the opening of an Estates-General. The public debate was greatly encouraged by, and indeed largely carried on in, the innumerable pamphlets which appeared after the king had, in July, invited informed persons to submit memoranda on the proper form and functions of such an assembly. Amid this ‘avalanche of proposals, complaints, protests and far-fetched schemes’ there were a considerable number of pamphlets written by members of the lower clergy. Although the great majority of these are anonymous, the form of the titles and, more important, internal evidence indicate that they are almost certainly the work of clerical writers. The nature and content of these pamphlets are a valuable indication of the attitude of at least a considerable section—and this an influential section—of the lower clergy on the eve of the Revolution. In these pamphlets are expressed in their clearest form the ideas which formed the content of many of the speeches made by curé agitators in the electoral assemblies which met in the spring of 1789, and which, modified in more sober committees, dictated many of the clauses which clerical cahiers devoted to Church affairs.