Huguenots as “a sect which consists for the most part of craftsmen, as cobblers, tailors, and such ignorant people.”[783] Coupled with this religious and economic revolution, went also a change in the manners of society, which pervaded all classes—a change which began in the reign of Francis I and was continued under Henry II. The new internationalism of France, due to the Italian wars, was probably the initial cause of this. Returned soldiers, laden with the pay of booty of warfare, brought back into France the manners and customs of Italy, which commingled with the manners and customs introduced by wandering workmen from Germany and Switzerland.[784] The revision of the statutes of the guilds was one of the minor features of the reform programme of the political Huguenots in the States-General of Orleans, and the _Cahier-général_ of the third estate which was compiled from the local _cahiers_ presented by the deputies shows traces of the interest of France at large in the issue. Unfortunately these fuller local records are lost.[785] But this revision only looked to a modernizing of the mediaeval language of the _ordonnances_, which chiefly dated from the fourteenth century, and did not contemplate an entire recasting of them, so as to make them harmonize with the new industrial conditions. Only one man in the assembly seems to have appreciated the real condition of things. This was the chancellor L’Hôpital. Not content with the mild reorganization of the guilds recommended by the third estate, on the last day of the session, January 31, 1561, the chancellor drew up the famous ordinance of Orleans.[786] The intent of this statute was indirectly to restrain the enlarged economic tyranny of the guilds, to lessen the burden of apprenticeship, and to establish freer laboring conditions. This purpose the government aimed to attain by dissolving the confraternities, for by striking at these it really struck the guilds, since many of these associations were one and the same. No distinction was made between associations whose character was religious or charitable, and those composed of patrons and workingmen; all the confraternities were grouped together and governmental supervision was provided for. They were not legislated out of existence by the new action, but reduced to a partial dissolution. Their accumulated hoards of capital were ordered to be expended for the support of schools and hospitals and similar institutions in the towns and villages where these various guilds were, and only a limited amount of money was left in their hands. The municipal officers, in co-operation with those of the crown were made personally responsible for the execution of this measure in every bailiwick. It is important to notice the significance of this course. The government, in fact, was pursuing a policy of partial secularization of the property of these confraternities for the benefit of the people at large, and compelling distribution of the