The Jesuits had no sooner set their foot in France than they began to spread rapidly over the country, and soon after aspired to enter the university and monopolise the whole of the education of the youth. With part of the immense fortune bequeathed to them by the Bishop of Clermont, of which they at last got possession, notwithstanding the opposition of the parliament, they built a college in the Rue St Jacques, near the Sorbonne, and, pretending to obey the orders of the parliament, which enjoined them to renounce the name of the Society of Jesus, they inscribed on the front of it, “College of the Society of the _Name_ of Jesus.” But the university would not admit them into its bosom, notwithstanding all the intrigues of the fathers and the orders of the Court. Of this protracted contest, which terminated in favour of the Jesuits in 1616, we shall only transcribe part of an apology addressed by the university to Pope Gregory XIII.—“We do not,” wrote the university, “vex either churches or private persons; we do not trouble the order of succession; we do not solicit testaments in prejudice of the heirs, or appropriate the profits to our own interest; we do not plot devices to seize upon the benefices of the monasteries, or of any other ecclesiastical establishment, to enrich ourselves with their property, without being subject to the conditions imposed by the founders; we do not make use of the name of Jesus to deceive the consciences of princes, affirming that no one remains longer than ten years in purgatory.”[165] Our history is becoming too pregnant with grave events to allow us to relate matters of secondary importance. We shall therefore bring down our readers to the year 1577, when was formed the celebrated league which gave occasion to the bloody and protracted civil wars of France, and of which the Jesuits were the chief instigators.