[281] Despatches of Suriano (Huguenot Society), December 18, 1560; Rel. vén., I, 433. “I found the court very much altered ... not one of the house of Guise.”—C. S. P. For., No. 832, December 31, 1560.
[282] Claude Haton, I, 11.
[283] The law of France, by ordinance of Charles V, had for generations provided that the king’s majority was attained when he was fourteen years of age; but the King’s uncles claimed that the meaning of the law was that the King’s majority was not reached until the end of his fourteenth year, i. e., upon his fifteenth birthday, which, in the case of Charles IX, would not be until June 27, 1564. This ingenious argument was sustained by various authors subsidized by the Guises, who went farther and argued away the regency of the queen mother also, in spite of the precedents of Blanche of Castille and Anne of Beaujeu, on the ground of the Salic law (Chantonnay to Philip II, December 28, 1560; K. 1,494, No. 12).
[284] D’Aubigné, I, 302; Correspondance de Catherine de Médicis, I, 176; Despatches of Suriano (Huguenot Society), March 29, 1561; C. S. P. For., No. 77, § 3, March 31, 1560; La Place, 120, 121; De Crue, Anne de Montmorency, 299.
[285] Cf. Viollet, Inst. polit. de la France, II, 95.
[286] The arrangement of executive offices at this time was very different from that of a modern government. Instead of there being a single secretary for foreign affairs, there were individual secretaries for each country—one for Italy, one for Spain, one for Flanders, one for Germany, etc., and each one attended to his own business. This eliminated one more power in the government, exactly as Catherine wanted.
[287] Despatches of Suriano (Huguenot Society), March 29, 1561. “The King is young and the constable has now a great authority in the realm.... But if they recover their authority, it is to be feared that they will use more extremity than they did before, and that therefore the queen cannot but fear his danger in this case.”—C. S. P. For., No. 1,030, February 26, 1561, § 6.
[288] See the remarkable character-sketch of the Venetian ambassador in Rel. vén., I, 425-27.
[289] Despatches of Suriano (Huguenot Society), December 8, 1560. On the efforts of the Guises to control the States-General of 1560 see Weill, 40.
[290] D’Aubigné, I, 304; Paris, Négociations, 789.