[796] Lettres-patentes of Charles IX extended the right of Protestant worship to Condom, St. Sevère, and Dax, towns which did not figure in the edict of March 19 (Ruble, Commentaires et lettres de Montluc, IV, 257, 272, and notes). A royal ordinance was later issued giving a list of those towns where Calvinist worship was permitted, specifying that it must be conducted in the faubourgs, however (Mém. de Condé, IV, 338).
[797] Within a month the government received anonymous information of Candalle’s activity (Archives de la Gironde, XXI, 14 [April 16, 1563]). Cf. “Lettre de Candalle à la reine, du mai 20, 1563” (F. Fr. 15,875, fol. 495). In the same volume, fol. 491, is a joint declaration of the gentlemen of Guyenne upon the purposes of this association.
[798] Commentaires et lettres de Montluc, IV, 214.
[799] Correspondance de Catherine de Médicis, I, 552, col. 2. At the same time Catherine wrote to certain members of the Parlement of Bordeaux. Montluc’s reply, both the personal letter he wrote to the queen mother (April 11), and the more official remonstrance he forwarded to the King, is a palpable lie. He wrote to the queen “Je vous puis asseurer ... que despuis la nouvelle de la paix, il n’y a eu traicté d’association aucune; que, au moindre mot que j’en ay dict, tout ne soit cessé comme s’il n’en avoit jamais esté parle.”—Commentaires et lettres, IV, 206. Cf. his similar declaration to Charles IX, on p. 214. The clergy of Bordeaux sustained Montluc in this deception, and when the queen’s suspicion continued, justified the association on the ground of religion. Corresp. de Catherine de Méd., I, 552, note. Candalle in a letter of May 20, 1563, still evaded the truth in writing to the queen (F. Fr., 15,876, fol. 495), and Catherine, upon more suspicious information from d’Escars, determined to satisfy herself of certain facts, and sent two commissioners to Guyenne to secure better information (Commentaires et lettres de Montluc, IV, 270, note). Unfortunately for the government, the Parlement of Bordeaux resented their coming as an invasion of their jurisdiction, and the inquiry degenerated into a quarrel between the Parlement and the commissioners (ibid., IV, 292, n. 1; Corresp. de Catherine de Médicis, II, 114, 115).
[800] Claude Haton, I, 266.
[801] “A Lyon, les catholiques y sont pour le jour d’huy en plus grand nombre des troiz partz pour une que les huguenotz; mais les dits huguenotz sont les principaulx et ceulx qui ont les forces en mains.”—Granvella to the emperor Ferdinand I, April 12, 1564, Papiers d’état du cardinal de Granvelle, VII, 467.
[802] The coast trade with England and Holland probably explains the prevalence of Protestantism in Lower Normandy, at least in part. But the reasons of the prevalence of rural Huguenotism on an extensive scale in Normandy are quite obscure. On this subject see La Ferrière, Normandie à l’étranger, 2-5, 82; Hauser, “The French Reformation and the French People in the Sixteenth Century,” American Historical Review, January 1899, 225, 226.
[803] Hauser, op. cit., 226, 227. I find in Montluc an interesting allusion to the prevalence of the Reformed belief among the peasantry of Guyenne, which M. Hauser has not noticed. It occurs in a letter of “Instruction au cappitaine Monluc [Pierre-Bertrand, called captain Peyrot] de ce qu’il dira à la royne et au roy de Navarre, de la part du sieur de Monluc, touchant l’état de Guyenne,” March 25, 1561, and is as follows: “Et ce, à cause des insollences, scandalles et contemnements que les paisans dudit païs leur ont faict depuis ung an en cà,” etc.—Commentaires et lettres de Montluc, IV, 115.
[804] Hauser, “The French Reformation and the French People in the Sixteenth Century,” American Hist. Review, January 1899, 224. For further information upon this change in the condition of the lower and middle classes in France in the sixteenth century see Avenel, “La fortune mobilière dans l’histoire,” Revue des deux mondes, August 1, 1892, pp. 605, 606; idem, “La propriété foncière de Philippe-Auguste à Napoléon,” Revue des deux mondes, February 1, 1893, pp. 128, 129; April 15, 1893, pp. 796, 797, 801-3, 812, 813; August 15, 1893, pp. 853-55; Lavisse, Histoire de France, V, Pt. I, 262-65.
[805] Remonstrance sent to the Pope out of France, C. S. P. For., No. 1453 (1562).