[8] "Dopo il papa che è universal capo della religione, e la signoria di Venezia, che, come è nata, s'è conservata sempre cristiana." Suriano, ubi supra, i. 472.
[9] This was in the early part of Queen Elizabeth's reign, Dec. 15, 1559, MSS. British Museum. I use the summary in the Calendar of State Papers (Stevenson), p. 197, note.
[10] Marino Cavalli stated, in 1546, that this systematic policy of continually incorporating and never alienating had been pursued for eighty years. So successful had it proved, that everything had been absorbed by confiscation, succession, or purchase. There was, perhaps, no longer a single prince in the kingdom with an income of 20,000 crowns; while even their scanty resources and straitened estates the princes possessed simply as ordinary proprietors, from whose actions an appeal was open to the king. Relazioni Venete (Albèri, Firenze), serie 1, i. 234, 235.
[11] Yet the old prejudice against city life had not fully died out. So late as in 1527, Chassanée wrote: "Galliæ omnis una est nobilium norma. Nam rura et prædia sua (dicam potius castra) incolentes urbes fugiunt, in quibus habitare nobilem turpe ducitur. Qui in illis degunt, ignobiles habentur a nobilibus." Catalogus Gloriæ Mundi, fol. 200.
[12] Michel Suriano, Rel. des Amb. Vén., i. 488.
[13] Mignet, ubi supra, ii. 160, etc.
[14] Rel. dell' Amb. Marino Cavalli (1546), ubi supra, i. 229.
[15] It would seem that the Venetian ambassadors were never free from apprehension lest their admiration of what they had seen abroad might be construed as disparagement of their own island city. Hence, Marino Giustiniano (A. D. 1535), after making the statement which we have given in the text, is careful to add: "Pur non arriva di richezza ad una gran gionta quanto Venezia; nè anco ha maggior popolo, per mio giudizio, di che loro si gloriano." Rel. Venete (Albèri, Firenze), serie 1, i. 148.
[16] The lowest estimate, which is that of Guicciardini (Belgiæ Descriptio, apud Prescott, Philip II., i. 367), is probably nearest the mark; the highest, 800,000, is that of Davila, Storia delle Guerre Civili, 1. iii. (Eng. trans., p. 79). Marino Cavalli, in 1546, says 500,000; Michel Suriano, in 1561, between 400,000 and 500,000. M. Dulaure is even more parsimonious than Guicciardini, for he will allow Paris, in the sixteenth century, not more than 200,000 to 210,000 souls! Histoire de Paris, iv. 384. Some of the exaggerated estimates may be errors of transcription. At least Ranke asserts that this is the case with the 500,000 of Fran. Giustiniani in 1537, where the original manuscript gives only 300,000. Französische Geschichte, v. (Abschn. 1), 76.
[17] See, for example, the MS. receipt, from which it appears that, in 1516, Sieur Imbert de Baternay pledged his entire service of plate to help defray the expenses of the war. Capefigue, François Premier et la Renaissance, i. 141.