It was only with the eager popular demand for instruction and information which developed with the outbreak of the Reformation, that there came to the people at large a realisation of the value to them of the invention of Gutenberg, and an understanding of its importance for the work of educating and of organising the people for the securing of the right of individual thought and for protection against the oppression of Church and State. The work of publishing material for popular circulation begins practically with the Reformation. As the people came to realise the value of the new weapon that had been shaped for its use, there was developed a corresponding distrust and antagonism on the part of the Church (which had at first been a liberal supporter of the printers), and on the part also of not a few of the State rulers. The system of censorship, ecclesiastical and political, a system which was to do much to hamper the development of literature and of publishing, dates in substance from the Reformation; no censorship, however rigorous, was competent to restrain the growing activity of the press, an activity itself awakened by the increase in the popular demand for literature, and, notwithstanding all the difficulties above referred to, the reading public within reach of Robert Estienne was very much greater than that which twenty-five or thirty years back had been available for his father. At the time Robert began his business career, Francis I. was King of France, Charles V., Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Henry VIII., King of England. The Paris of 1524 contained about 350,000 inhabitants. The University, which under Louis XI. was said to have comprised over 20,000 students, had seriously declined, and was destined to lose still more during the succeeding century as the Romanist spirit secured the complete control. It included, however, under Francis, not less than 10,000 students, and must still have ranked as the leading university of Europe. The printer-publishers of the city carried on their work in close connection with the University, of which, in fact, under the system handed down from the manuscript period, the _libraires jurés_ were still members, and the University continued to claim the right to control such supervision and censorship as might be exercised over the productions of the press. The syndic of the Sorbonne (the theological division of the University) was at this time Noel Bedier, who affected the name of Beda, after the venerable Bede. He is described as a fanatical pedant and an incessant disputant, always on the lookout for heresy and for some new victim to persecute.[6] It was a gratification to him to have been born in this age of heterodoxy, and he was constantly goading the Sorbonne to censure.