-
The privileged estates
The first estate was made up of the Roman Catholic Church, less than 1 percent of the French population. The church had been powerful and wealthy ever since the Middle Ages. By the late 1700s the church owned about 15 percent of all the land in France, and so collocated vast amounts of money from rents, taxes, and fees. Most of the wealth was held by the higher clergy bishops, archbishops, and abbots who did not pay taxes themselves. Many of these higher church officials became materialistic