[Footnote 574: Coste, _Hist. de Le Picard_, p. 46; Schmidt, _Mémoires de Roussel_, p. 107.] [Footnote 575: Crespin, _Martyrologue_, fol. 106.] [Footnote 576: Froment, _Actes et Gestes_, p. 75.] [Footnote 577: _Actes et Gestes_, p. 75.] [Footnote 578: Froment, _Actes et Gestes_, p. 75.] [Footnote 579: Ibid.] [Footnote 580: Crespin, _Martyrologue_, fol. 107.] [Footnote 581: Crespin, _Martyrologue_, fol. 107.] [Footnote 582: Ibid.] [Footnote 583: Crespin, _Martyrologue_, fol. 107. Froment, _Actes et Gestes_, p. 76.] [Footnote 584: Ibid.] [Footnote 585: Crespin, _Martyrologue_, fol. 107 verso. Froment, _Actes et Gestes_, p. 78.] CHAPTER XXXIII. WURTEMBERG GIVEN TO PROTESTANTISM BY THE KING OF FRANCE. (SPRING 1534.) The idea of correcting the errors of the Church without changing its government was not new in France. By the Pragmatic Sanction in 1269, St. Louis had founded the liberties of the Gallican Church; and the great idea of reform had been widely spread since the time of the council of Constance (1414), of Clemengis, and of Gerson. The two Du Bellays, with many priests, scholars, and noblemen, thought it was the only means of calming down the agitations of christendom, and Margaret of Valois had made it the great business of her life. [Sidenote: INTERVIEW OF DU BELLAY AND BUCER.] William du Bellay, on his way back from Augsburg, where he had delivered such noble speeches in favour of the protestant dukes of Wurtemberg, had stopped at Strasburg, and had several meetings with the pacific Bucer. His success in Germany, his conversations with the evangelical princes and doctors, who took him for as sound a protestant as themselves, had filled him with hope. In no place could those who desired to take a middle course meet with more sympathy than at Strasburg; there was quite a system of compromises there with the Swiss and with Luther; why not with Rome also? 'Since Luther will not give way in anything,' Bucer had said, 'I will accommodate myself to his terminology; only I will avoid every expression that may indicate a too local and too gross presence of the body of Christ in the bread.'[586] Accordingly Bucer, with his pious and moderate friends Capito, Hedio, and Zell, received the diplomatic mediator with great pleasure. They retired to the reformer's library, where Du Bellay explained his great project with all the seriousness of a man convinced. 'It is a greater work,' he said to Bucer, 'than this union of Zwinglians and Lutherans which has hitherto been your sole and constant occupation. We wish to effect a fusion between catholicism and the Reformation. We shall maintain the _unity_ of the former; we shall uphold the _truth_ of the latter.' Du Bellay's plan was at bottom, we see, the same as Leibnitz endeavoured to get Bossuet and Louis XIV. to accept. Bucer was in ecstasies: it was what he had sought so long; the diplomatist appeared to him as if surrounded with a halo of glory. And