[325] La Place, III; C. S. P. For., No. 938, February 12, 1561. In a letter dated January 22, 1561, to Peter Martyr, Hotman gives an admirable account of the session of the States-General at Orleans. See Dareste, “François Hotman,” Mém. de l’Acad. des sc. moral. et polit., CIV, 654-56.
[326] Despatches of Suriano (Huguenot Society), March 1, 1561.
[327] C. S. P. For., No. 49, March 18, 1561.
[328] Ibid., Ven., No. 242, March 3, 1561.
[329] La Place, 129; La Popelinière, I, 244; De Thou, IV, 66, 67. The king of Navarre, most of the princes of the blood, cardinals, and nobles being present, chief among whom were the duke of Guise and the cardinal of Lorraine. The prince was declared innocent, all the information brought against him was pronounced false and the letters, forgeries. This rehabilitation was also extended to the vidame of Chartres and Madame de Roye, Coligny’s sister and mother of the princess of Condé, and the parlementary arrêt was ordered to be proclaimed in all the courts of parlement of the realm (C. S. P. For., No. 265, § 8, June 23, 1561).
[330] Nég. Tosc., III, 467, and note.
[331] Ordonnance générale des états assemblés à Orléans, p. 5; Isambert, XIV, 65. In pursuance of this legislation the cardinal of Lorraine resigned a few of his pluralities. He gave the bishopric of Metz to his brother, the cardinal of Guise, and retained for himself the archbishopric of Rheims, with the Abbeys of St. Rémy and St. Denis (Claude Haton, I, 234). On April 1, 1561, the action of the States-General was affirmed in a royal edict which commanded the bishops to return to their dioceses and there reside under pain of seizure of their temporalities, and in every bailiwick in France inventories were to be made of the whole revenues of the priest (Isambert, XIV, 101). It was followed by an edict dealing with the administration of the hospitals and support of the poor (ibid., 105), designed to put an end to corrupt practice on the part of unprincipled and avaricious priests who did not wish to reside at home and so sold their cures to presbyters. Those who had numerous benefices found means to excuse themselves from residence in their cures, in virtue of an article of the edict, which provided that ecclesiastics who had numerous cures, which they held par dispense, or other benefices or charges requiring actual residence in some other church, and who could not by this means reside in their parishes, by residing in one of the parishes or other churches in which they had a benefice or office requiring residence, were exempt from residing in their other cures, provided that they committed them to the care of capable vicars. In virtue of this article they were permitted the enjoyment of their revenues after having satisfied the king’s officers in each bailiwick. Cf. Claude Haton, I, 221, 222. The revenues of hospitals were assumed control of by the government, and the administration thereof was committed to the care of special administrators. Local judicial officers instead of the clergy, as formerly, were to supervise the distribution of money, wood, wine, and provisions, to priors, monks, nuns, and the poor.
The hospitals of various towns of France and in particular the hôtels-dieu at Paris and Troyes, had already, even before this, been governed by lay commissioners. For a complaint of bad administration of the Hôtel-Dieu at Provins by the lay officers, who enriched themselves at the expense of the poor, and let the house run down, for which reason the King was requested to restore the administration to the clergy, see Claude Haton, I, 223.
[332] The letter which the bishop of Limoges, the French ambassador in Madrid, wrote “après la mort de François II,” detailing the Spanish monarch’s fear, is almost prophetic (Paris, Négociations relatives au règne de François II, 782-85).
[333] Philip II, to Charles IX, January 4, 1561, K. 1,495, No. 13; to Mary Stuart, January 7, K. 1,495, No. 17; C. S. P. For., No. 870, January 10, 1561. He arrived on the evening of January 23. Cf. Don Juan de Manrique and Chantonnay to Philip II, January 28, 1561, K. 1,494, No. 55, giving an account of his reception at the French court. He left about February 10, 1561 (C. S. P. For., Nos. 933, January 23, 1561, and 984, February 11, 1561).