FRANCHISE OF QUARTERS, is a certain space or district at Rome, wherein are the houses of the ambassadors of the princes of Europe; and where such as retire cannot be arrested or seized by the stirri or sergeants, nor prosecuted at law. The people of Rome look on this as an old usurpation and a scandalous privilege, which ambassadors, out of a jealousy of their power, carried to a great length in the 15th century, by enlarging infinitely the dependencies of their palaces or houses, within which the right of franchise was anciently confined. Several of the popes, Julius III. Pius XIV. Gregory XIII. and Sixtus V. published bulls and ordinances against this abuse; which had rescued so considerable a part of the city from their authority, and rendered it a retreat for the most abandoned persons. At length Innocent XI. expressly refused to receive any more ambassadors but such as would make a formal renunciation of the franchise of quarters.