Charles de Noyelle, a Belgian, was now appointed Vicar; and at the congregation which assembled in 1682 he was elected General, receiving every vote except his own. He was then sixty-seven years old. His first task was to adjust the difficulty between Innocent XI and Louis XIV on the question of the _régale_, or the royal right to administer the revenues of a certain number of vacant abbeys and episcopal sees claimed by the kings of France. Such invasions of the Church-rights by the State were common extending as far back as the times of St. Bernard. By 1608 the French parliament had extended this prerogative to the whole of France; but the upright Henry IV, half Protestant though he was, refused to accept it; whereas later on the Catholic Louis XIV had no scruples about the matter, and issued an edict to that effect. The Pope protested and refused to send the Bulls to the royal nominees for the vacant dioceses, with the result that at one time there were thirty sees in France without a bishop. Only two prelates stood out against the king and, strange to say, one of them was Caulet, the Jansenist Bishop of Pamiers; who, stranger still, lived on intimate terms with the Jesuits. So far the Jesuits had kept out of the controversy, but, unfortunately, Father Louis Maimbourg published a book in support of the king, and, eminently distinguished though he was in the field of letters, especially in history, he was promptly expelled from the Society. The king angrily protested and ordered Maimbourg not to obey, but the General stood firm and Maimbourg severed his connection with his former brethren. As substantially all the bishops were arrayed against the Pope, copies of the Bull against Louis were sent to the Jesuit provincials for distribution. The situation was most embarrassing, but before the copies were delivered, they were seized by the authorities. In retaliation for the Bull, the king took the principality of Benevento, which was part of the patrimony of the Church, and thus drew upon himself a sentence of excommunication. As this document would also have been refused by the bishops, it was entrusted to a Jesuit Father named Dez, who was on his way from Rome to France.