The clergy were the most wealthy body in the state. La Noue reckons one hundred episcopal and archiepiscopal sees in France, 650 abbeys belonging to the orders of St. Bernard and St. Benedict, all “beautified with good kitchens” and 2500 priories. Jean Bouchet has left a curious picture of the clergy at the early part of the century, and there are no grounds for believing that they had at all improved in the interval before his death in 1555. He complains that the candidates for holy orders possess all the qualities not wanted, and none that are. Of the cardinals and bishops he says, they ought to preach the Gospel, and be Du peuple la lumière, Le bon exemple et la clarté première. Montluc, Bishop of Valence, declared in a sermon preached in 1559, that out of ten priests there were eight who could not read. We may charitably suppose that he exaggerates. The clergy by no means dwelt together in unity, and their quarrels became such a nuisance that, in 1542, the bishops were commanded to put a stop to the practice of delivering abusive sermons from the pulpit. The order would seem to have been ineffectual, for, in 1556, the priests were forbidden to preach unless they had first submitted their sermons to the diocesan. This regulation may have been partly intended as a watch over heretical opinions; but in the same year the procurator-general issued an order of Parliament against all such as had indulged in “abusive language” in the pulpit. The fact is, that the sixteenth century was one of singular excitement in every respect. Society was in travail. The clergy shared in the general restlessness, and the press not being quick enough, they resorted to their pulpits to refute an antagonist, and preached sermons instead of writing leading articles. They spared nobody who attacked them, or did not support them. A friar of the order of Minims, Jean de Haas by name, preached in his Advent sermons (Dec., 1561) so violently against the edict of that year, and the king and queen-mother for sanctioning it, that the provost was ordered to arrest him “early in the morning,” and take him bound and gagged to St. Germains; but the citizens, immediately they heard of his capture, marched out in crowds to the royal residence, and, irritated with this “indignity,” as Pasquier terms it, demanded the preacher back. The king was forced to give him up, and Jean returned in triumph to Paris, “as if he were a great prince.” The next day he celebrated his deliverance by a solemn procession to the Church of St. Bartholomew.[186] At the beginning of 1572 Sorbin, the king’s preacher, declaimed violently against the king because he would not give immediate orders for murdering the Huguenots, and publicly exhorted the Duke of Anjou to undertake the task himself, holding out hopes to him of the primogeniture, as Jacob prevailed over Esau. But the heretics could be as violent as the orthodox. The Huguenot