[949] Sommaire récit, ubi supra. "For, being a prince of the blood, he said, his process was to be adjudged either by the Princes of the blood or by the twelve Peers; and therefore willed the Chancellor and the rest to trouble him no further." Throkmorton, Nov. 28, 1560, Hardwick, State Papers, i. 151. Castelnau (liv. ii., c. 11) has, by a number of precedents, proved the validity of this claim.
[950] Mémoires de Condé, i. 619, containing the royal arrêt of Nov. 20th, rejecting Condé's demand; Sommaire récit. The (subsequent) First President of parliament, Christopher de Thou, was, after Chancellor L'Hospital, the leading member of the commission. His son, the historian, may be pardoned for dismissing the unpleasant subject with careful avoidance of details. La Planche makes no mention of the chancellor in connection with the case, but records Condé's indignant remonstrance against so devoted a servant of the Guises as the first president acting as judge.
[951] La Planche, 399.
[952] La Planche, 401; Davila, 37, 38; Castelnau, l. ii., c. 12. The unanimous voice of contemporary authorities, and the accounts given by subsequent historians, are discredited by De Thou alone (ii. 835, 836), who expresses the conviction, based upon his recollection of his father's statement, that the sentence was drawn up, but never signed. He also represents Christopher de Thou as suggesting to Condé his appeal from the jurisdiction of the commission, and opposing the violent designs of the Guises.
[953] La Planche, 401; Castelnau, liv. ii., c. 12.
[954] La Planche, 405, 406, has preserved this striking speech, which I have somewhat condensed in the text. Agrippa d'Aubigné, Histoire universelle, ubi supra.
[955] La Planche, it may be noticed, leans to this supposition. Ibid., 405.
[956] Ibid., 406; D'Aubigné, ubi supra.
[957] See Michele Suriano's account, Rel. des Amb. Vén., i. 528. The ambassador seems to have entertained no doubt of the complete success that would have crowned the movement had Francis's life been spared: "Il quale, se vivea un poco più, non solamente averia ripresso, ma estinto dal tutto quell' incendio che ora consuma il regno." The Spanish ambassador, Chantonnay, writing to his master, Nov., 1560, confirms the statements of Protestant contemporaries respecting the plan laid out for the destruction of the Bourbons, and then of the admiral and his brother D'Andelot; but the wily brother of Cardinal Granvelle, much as he would have rejoiced at the destruction of the heads of the Huguenot faction, was alarmed at the wholesale proscription, and expressed grave fears that so intemperate and violent a course would provoke a serious rebellion, and perhaps give rise to a forcible intervention in French affairs, on the part of Germany or England. "Pero á mi paresce que seria mas acertado castigar poco á poco los culpados que prender tantos de un golpe, porque assi se podrian meter en desesperacion sus parientes, y causar alguna grande rebuelta y admitir mas facilmente las platicas de fuera del reyno ... o de Alemania o de Inglaterra." Papiers de Simancas, apud Mignet, Journal des Savants, 1859, p. 39.
[958] Mém. de Castelnau, liv. ii., c. 12; La Planche, 404; Mémoires de Mergey (Collection Michaud and Poujoulat), 567. The Count of La Rochefoucauld, hearing through the Duchess of Uzès—a bosom confidant of Catharine, but a woman who was not herself averse to the Reformation—that Francis had remarked that the count "must prepare to say his Credo in Latin," had made all his arrangements to pass from Champagne into Germany with his faithful squire De Mergey, both disguised as plain merchants.