men who invoke the name of Jesus in the midst of the flames." The King was furious. He ordered the arrest of du Bourg and du Faur on the spot, and shortly afterwards Fumée and La Porte were also sent to the Bastille. This arbitrary seizure of members of the _Parlement_ of Paris may be said to mark the time when the Protestants of France began to assume the form of a political as well as of a religious party. At this anxious juncture Henry II. met his death, on June 30th, by the accidental thrust of a lance at a tournament held in honour of the approaching marriage of his daughter Elizabeth with Philip of Spain. He lingered till July 10th, 1559. § 8. _The higher Aristocracy won for the Reformation._ When the lists of Protestants who suffered for their faith in France or who were compelled to take refuge in Geneva and other Protestant towns are examined and analysed, as they have been by French archæologists, it is found that the great number of martyrs and refugees were artisans, tradesmen, farmers, and the like.[203] A few names of "notables"--a general, a member of the _Parlement_ of Toulouse, a "gentleman" of Limousin--are found among the martyrs, and a much larger proportion among the fugitives. The names of members of noble houses of France are conspicuous by their absence. This does not necessarily mean that the new teaching had not found acceptance among men and women in the upper classes of French society. The noble of the sixteenth century, so long as he remained within his own territory and in his château, was almost independent. He was not subject to the provincial tribunals. Protestantism had been spreading among such. We hear of several high-born ladies present in the congregation of three or four hundred Protestants who were surrounded in a large house in the Rue St. Jacques (Sept. 4th, 1558), and who were released. Renée, daughter of Louis XII., Duchess of Ferrara, had declared herself a Protestant, and had been visited by Calvin as early as 1535.[204] Francis d'Andelot, the youngest of the three Chatillons, became a convert during his imprisonment at Melun (1551-56). His more celebrated brother, Gaspard de Coligny, the Admiral of France, became a Protestant during his imprisonment after the fall of St. Quentin (1558).[205] De Bèze (Beza) tells us that as early as 1555, Antoine de Bourbon, titular King of Navarre in right of his wife Jeanne d'Albret, and next in succession to King Henri II. and his sons, had the new faith preached in the chapel at Nérac, and that he asked a minister to be sent to him from Geneva. His brother Louis, Prince of Condé, also declared himself on the Protestant side. The wives of the brothers Bourbon, Jeanne d'Albret and Eléanor de Roye, were more determined and consistent Protestants than their husbands. The two brothers were among those present at the assemblies in the Pré-aux-Clercs, where for five successive evenings (May 13-17) more