In 1565 a fresh attack had been made on the Jesuit college, and a fruitless appeal against it was made to the Royal Senate. The Jesuits then arraigned the University, which refused to recognise their college, before the Parliament, and a fresh opportunity was offered to the Parisian lawyers to draw up their scathing indictments of the Society. In the meantime, Father Possevin, rector of the college they had recently opened at Lyons, was sent to see the young King and Catherine de Medici at Bayonne, and induce them to throw their power and command into the legal scale. The conference at Bayonne, at which Possevin assisted in some measure, is of grave importance in the history of Europe. On the pretext of making Charles acquainted with his kingdom, Catherine was bringing him into the neighbourhood of other Catholic princes and conferring with them. At Bayonne she met the wife of Philip of Spain, and in the Queen's suite was the grim Duke of Alva. We can only conjecture what was discussed at this conference, but no one doubts that the chief subject was the growth of Protestantism in Catholic lands. Protestant historians frequently suggest that the St. Bartholomew massacre was actually projected at Bayonne, but we are hardly justified in thinking that there was anything more than a general discussion of the brutal policy which was afterwards adopted by Alva in the Netherlands and Catherine in France. In any case, it is most unlikely that Possevin had any share in these secret counsels. He was a new man, hardly known to the court in 1565. He discussed the affairs of his Society with the Spanish Queen, and revealed to her the smuggling of Protestant books into her country; and he returned to Paris with letters, commending the suit of the Paris college, from Catherine, Charles, and the Cardinal de Bourbon.