We have seen the Jesuits executed in England as traitors. We beheld them in Portugal, as successful conspirators, dispose of a sceptre wrested from the hands of their benefactors. We shall now see them in France acting the part of traitors, conspirators, and regicides, and the principal cause of an indescribable evil. We have already mentioned the famous _arrêt_ (decision) of 1554, by which the parliament of Paris refused to admit the Jesuits into the kingdom. From this time, down to the year 1562, the disciples of Loyola had repeatedly obtained from the French sovereign letters patent authorising their establishment; but the parliament by repeated _arrêts_ refusing to register them, rendered these letters nugatory, and the contest went on, with no prospect of decision. The king, the Guises, and a party of the nobles, sided with the Jesuits. The parliament, the university, the Bishop of Paris and his clergy, were against them. The principal objection to the admission of the Jesuits which was advanced by their adversaries was, that they had obtained from the Court of Rome privileges[161] which made them independent of the ordinary and of every other ecclesiastical authority. To obviate this objection, the Jesuits, in 1560, determined to carry their point, presented a petition to the king, in which they renounced their privileges, and solemnly engaged to respect the laws of the realm and those of the Gallican Church, and to submit to the jurisdiction of the ordinaries.[162] The court now imperatively commanded the parliament to admit the Jesuits. The Archbishop de Belley, vanquished by “the urgency of the court, from which he expected the Cardinal’s hat,”[163] partly withdrew his opposition, and gave his consent, but under so many restrictions, that, as Crétineau says, it was rather a protest against them than anything else. The parliament, which till now had withheld its consent, leaning on the archbishop’s opposition, now registered the king’s letters patent, but under the same restrictions; adding, that the Jesuits might appeal to the next national council or assembly. At this very time a national council was convened at Poissy, to put an end, if possible, to religious dissension, and heal the wounds of the Church. Catherine de Medici, whose favourite maxim was, _divide et imperia_, shewed herself impartial in this contest, thinking to retain the obedience of one party by the fear it had of the other. She herself, therefore, along with the king and the whole court, assisted at the Council of Poissy. We shall not enter into the theological discussions of this assembly. We shall only say, that although a Roman Catholic cardinal presided over and directed it, and although the Roman Catholics had a large majority, yet the eloquence of the Calvinistic divines, and especially that of Beza, was so overpowering, that Lainez, after having had a thrust or two at the redoubted champion, declared it to be almost a