Crespin names thirteen Churches, completely organised in the manner of the Church of Paris, founded between 1555 and 1557--Meaux, Poitiers, Angers, les Iles de Saintonge, Agen, Bourges, Issoudun, Aubigny, Blois, Tours, Lyon, Orléans, and Rouen. He adds that there were others. Documentary evidence now available enables us to give thirty-six more, all _dressées_, or completely organised, with a consistory or kirk-session, before 1560. One hundred and twenty pastors were sent to France from Geneva before 1567. The history of these congregations during the reign of Henry II. was full of tragic and dramatic incidents.[197] They existed in the midst of a population which was for the most part fanatically Romanist, easily excited by priests and monks, who poured forth violent addresses from the pulpits of neighbouring churches. Law-courts, whether in the capital or in the provinces, the public officials, all loyal subjects of the King, were invited, commanded by the Edict of Chateaubriand, to ferret out and hunt down those suspected of Protestant sympathies. To fail to make a reverence when passing a crucifix, to speak unguardedly against an ecclesiastical ceremony, to exhibit the slightest sympathy for a Protestant martyr, to be found in possession of a book printed in Geneva, was sufficient to provoke a denunciation, an arrest, a trial which must end in torture and death. Protestants were compelled to worship in cellars, to creep stealthily to their united devotions; like the early Christians during the persecutions under Decius or Diocletian, they had to meet at midnight; and these midnight assemblies gave rise to the same infamous reports about their character which the Jews spread abroad regarding the secret meetings of the Christians of the first three centuries.[198] Every now and then they were discovered, as in the incident of the Rue Saint Jacques in Paris, and wholesale arrests and martyrdoms followed. The organisation of the faithful into Churches had done much for French Protestantism in bestowing upon them the power which association gives; but more was needed to weld them into one. In 1558, doctrinal differences arose in the congregation at Poitiers. The Church in Paris was appealed to, and its minister, Antoine de Chandieu, went to Poitiers to assist at the celebration of the Holy Supper, and to heal the dispute. There, it is said, the idea of a Confession of Faith for the whole Church was suggested. Calvin was consulted, but did not approve. Notwithstanding, on May 25th, 1559, a number of ministers and elders, coming from all parts of France, and representing, according to a contemporary document whose authority is somewhat doubtful, sixty-six Churches,[199] met in Paris for conference. Three days were spent in deliberations, under the presidency of Morel, one of the Parisian ministers. This was the _First National Synod_ of the French Protestant Church. It compiled a Confession of Faith and a Book of Discipline.