The Royal Financial Administration and the Prosecution of Crime in France, 1670-1789 explores the French monarchy's role in financing criminal prosecutions in the royal courts of the realm--the payment of criminal frais de justice in the vocabulary of the ancien regime--between 1670 and 1789 (that is, from the codification of criminal judicial procedure in the early period of Louis XIV's personal rule to the outbreak of the French Revolution). The subject brings together three areas of scholarly inquiry--criminal justice, royal administration, and the management of the crown's finances. A...