(Tortorel and Perissin)] The clergy naturally were in conformity with the canons and the Catholic ritual. They were declared to be “the organ and mouth” of France, much history and doctrinal writing being cited to prove their supremacy. Liberty of election in the matter of church offices, abolition of the abuse of the _dîme_, which, it was complained, had been extorted from the church, not once, but four, five, six, and even nine times in a year, and prelates put in prison for failure to pay, to the destruction of worship in the churches; suppression of heresy (thus early stigmatized as _la prétendue réformation_), and royal support of the authority of the priest-class, were the four demands of the clerical order.[298] The sittings were rendered less tedious by a bold attack made upon the persecution of religion by a deputy who demanded that the Huguenots be permitted to have their own church edifices—a plea which was reinforced by a hot protest of the admiral Coligny against an utterance of Quintin, the clerical orator.[299] As to religion, grave questions arose. Would the toleration of religion occasion civil war? Would it cause an ultimate alteration of the faith of France? Would it, finally, alter the state, too? The States-General refused to enter deeply into these problems. The petition of the Protestants was not mentioned.[300] In the end it was determined to grant a general pardon to all throughout the kingdom, without obliging anyone to retract, or to make any other canonical recantation—a proposal which was quite at variance with the constitution of the church and was regarded by Rome as exceeding the bounds of the authority of the King and his Council, cognizance of matters of this nature appertaining to ecclesiastics and not to laymen.[301] The pressure of the third estate as well as the influence of Coligny, L’Hôpital, and others, is discernible in this measure. For it had been determined in the Privy Council that should the Council-General not be held before June, the National Council would assemble in France. This could not be denied to the estates who demanded it; and this concession apparently at first caused all the three estates to agree not to renounce the old religion. To this must be added another reason, viz., that although the greater part of the clergy, more especially the bishops, approved the old religion, yet many of the nobility approved the new one.[302]