than five thousand persons met to sing Clement Marot's Psalms.[206] Calvin wrote energetically to all these great nobles, urging them to declare openly on the side of the Gospel, and protect their brethren in the faith less able to defend themselves. § 9. _France ruled by the Guises._[207] The successor of Henry II. was his son Francis II., who was fifteen years of age, and therefore entitled by French law to rule in his own name. He was a youth feeble in mind and in body, and devotedly attached to his young and accomplished wife, Mary Queen of Scots. She believed naturally that her husband could not do better than entrust the government of the kingdom to her uncles, Charles the Cardinal of Lorraine, and Francis the Duke de Guise. The Cardinal had been Henry II.'s most trusted Minister; and his brother was esteemed to be the best soldier in France. When the _Parlement_ of Paris, according to ancient custom, came to congratulate the King on his succession, and to ask to whom they were to apply in affairs of State, they were told by the King that they were to obey the Cardinal and the Duke "as himself." The Constable de Montmorency and the favourite, Diane de Poitiers, were sent from the Court, and the Queen-Mother, Catherine de' Medici, that "shopkeeper's daughter," as the young Queen called her, found herself as devoid of influence as she had been during the lifetime of her husband. The Cardinal of Lorraine had been the chief adviser of that policy of extirpating the Protestants to which the late King had devoted himself, and it was soon apparent that it would be continued by the new government. The process against Antoine du Bourg and his fellow-members of the _Parlement_ of Paris who had dared to remonstrate against the persecution, was pushed forward with all speed. They were condemned to the stake, and the only mitigation of sentence was that Du Bourg was to be strangled before he was burnt. His fate provoked much sympathy. As he was led to the place of execution the crowd pleaded with him to recant. His resolute, dignified bearing made a great impression; and his dying speech, according to one eye-witness, "did more harm to the Roman Church than a hundred ministers could have done," and, according to another, "made more converts among the French students than all the books of Calvin." The persecutions of Protestants of lower rank increased rather than diminished. Police made descents on the houses in the Rue de Marais-Saint-Germain and neighbouring streets.[208] Spies were hired to insinuate themselves into the confidence of the suspected for the purpose of denouncing them. The _Parlement_ of Paris instituted four separate criminal courts for the sole purpose of trying heretics brought before them. The prisons were no sooner filled than they were emptied by sentences which sent the condemned to the galleys or to death. The government incited to persecution by new declarations and edicts. It