[889] "Deux requestes de la part des Fideles de France, qui desirent viure selon la reformation de l'Euangile, donnees pour presenter au Conseil tenu à Fontainebleau au mois d'Aoust, M.D.LX." Recueil des choses mémorables faites et passees pour le faict de la Religion et estat de ce Royaume, depuis la mort du Roy Henry II. iusques au commencement des troubles. Sine loco, 1565, vol. i. 614-619.
[890] La Place, 54, 55, and La Planche, 351, are, as usual in this reign, our best authorities in reference to Coligny's address and the presentation of the petition; see also Hist. ecclés., i. 173, 174; De Thou, ii. 797; Castelnau, liv. ii., c. 8; Davila, bk. ii., p. 30. La Place and Jean de Serres, De statu, etc., i. 96 (who are followed by De Thou, etc.), seem to be more correct in assigning the address to the second session, than La Planche, the Hist. ecclés., etc., who place it at the very commencement of the first. Calvin, in a letter to Bullinger, Oct. 1, 1560 (Bonnet, iv. 135) describes the scene in the same manner as La Place. Vita Gasparis Colinii (1575), 27, etc.; Vie de Coligny (Cologne, 1686), p. 213, etc. Mr. Browning (Hist. of the Huguenots, i. 29) erroneously attributes the authorship of the last mentioned work to Francis Hotman (who died in 1590); whereas the author wrote after Maimbourg and Varillas, whose statements he controverts. (Pref., p. ii., and p. 86.) Hotman, as noticed elsewhere, was the author of the preceding and much more authentic book.
[891] Not, however, precisely in the ranks of the clergy. Marillac was a layman, whose success in negotiation had been rewarded with the archiepiscopal see of Vienne. In his youth he had been suspected of composing an apology for a "Lutheran" burned at the stake in Paris; and he died broken-hearted, seeing the ruin to which both church and state were tending, two months after the Assembly of Fontainebleau. La Place, 72, 73; La Planche, 360, 361. Neither was Montluc of Valence a clergyman. Paris, Négotiations sous François II., Notice, p. xxxvii.
[892] It was not unfrequently recommended, as a species of panacea for the evils in the church, that the bishops should all be sent off to their dioceses. An edict to that effect had recently been promulgated, and it was supposed that the parish curates would soon be directed to follow their example. (Languet, ii. 68.) "What else will result from this I know not," quietly adds the sensible diplomatist, "but that they will betray their ignorance and baseness, and that the contempt and hatred already entertained for them by the people will be augmented." Elsewhere, in expressing the same view of the absurdity of the order, he gives this unflattering description of the prelates: "cum plerique sint plane indocti et præterea luxu, libidinibus, et aliis sceleribus perditissimi," etc. (Ibid., ii. 73.)
[893] "Autant de deux escus que les banquiers avoyent envoyés à Rome, autant de curés nous avoyent-ils renvoyés," adds Montluc. La Place, 56.
[894] The harangue of Montluc is contained word for word, though with erroneous date, in the Recueil des choses mémorables (1565), pp. 286-305; also in La Place, 55-58; Mém. de Condé, 557-562. Summary in De Thou, ii. 797-800; Jean de Serres, De statu rel. et reip. (1571), i. 99-106.
[895] "Et qu'en tout événement nous ne voulons périr pour luy complaire." La Place, 60; La Planche, 354.
[896] "Et sur ce, ne fault espargner les Italiens qui occupent la troisiesme partie des bénéfices du royaume, ont pensions infinies, succent nostre sang comme sangsues," etc. La Place and La Planche, ubi supra.
[897] La Place, 64; La Planche, 359. Both historians give the speech verbatim. J. de Serres, i. 106-126; Letter of Calvin to Bullinger, Oct. 1, 1560, ubi supra; Hist. ecclés., i. 174-178. Would that these words of wholesome advice and sound philosophy had not been left unheeded by royalty and noblesse! The course of politic humanity to which they pointed might have saved a monarch his head, the noblesse countless lives and the loss of large possessions, and France a bloody revolution.
[898] La Planche, 361; La Place, 66; De Thou, ii. 802; Mém. de Castelnau, liv. ii. c. 8; Hist. ecclés., i. 178; Jean de Serres, i. 127.