For the purpose of carrying out his policy, the Pope appointed Chancellor Duprat to be archbishop of Sens, and created him a cardinal. Thus the Inquisition was, at once, constituted in France, as all the influential powers,--the regent, the chancellor, and the parliament,--were leagued with the Pope and the Sorbonne, to exterminate heresy with fire and sword. A commission was appointed, consisting of four priests, to whom was entrusted absolute power to proceed against all persons suspected of being tainted with Lutheran doctrines. The highest dignitaries were held responsible to this dread tribunal; and the first victim of the inquisitors was Briconnet, count of Montbrun, bishop of Meaux. He was compelled to answer, like the humblest priest, before two of the inquisitors, and every appeal that he attempted to make to the parliament, or to the regent, was rejected. He recanted the evangelical doctrines that he had preached; and Lefevre, an aged professor in the university, “the forerunner of the reformation,” fled to Strasburgh. But neither the fall of the bishop, nor the flight of the doctor, could satisfy the inquisitors of Paris. Jean Pavanne was burned at the stake in the Place de Grève, rejoicing that he was counted worthy to suffer death for Christ. Their next victim was “the good hermit of Livry.” As he had evangelised the villagers around his dwelling, about nine miles from Paris, it was resolved to make him a public example. A vast pile was raised in the open area in front of the cathedral of Notre Dame, in which this servant of Christ was sacrificed, in the presence of the whole of the clergy, and a multitude of the people, who had been called together by the great bell of the cathedral. To such humble victims others were added of higher rank, and by other means than the prison and the stake. Michael D’Arande, chaplain to the Princess Margaret, was threatened with death, and Anthony Papillon, chief master of requests to the Dauphin, was carried off by poison. The inquisitors, in a few months, had committed to the flames, or driven from France, nearly every individual who had been the object of their envy or suspicion. At length, after a year’s captivity in Spain, Francis obtained his freedom, on most humiliating conditions, to the performance of which he was bound by a solemn oath. From this oath to the emperor the Pope gave him absolution, and thereby bound him more closely to himself by such faithless bonds of perjury and deceit. But this favour rendered it the more difficult for him to change the policy which, under the regency of his mother, had delivered up the heretics of France to the inquisitors of Rome.