This lord, who was as prudent and temperate in council, as prompt and daring in execution, concluded for the methods of justice, maintaining that they were not only the more honest, but also the more safe, because the fear alone which would possess the duke’s party, lest they should kill him, in case they attempted to deliver him by force, and by that means hinder the course of justice, would stop all manner of such proceeding, and restrain them within the terms of duty: That after all, if he were once made prisoner, which might be done without noise or tumult, it would be easy to give him such judges, as should soon dispatch his trial, and that afterwards he might be executed in prison, according to the laws. But if, on the contrary, they should enter crudely on so bloody an execution, there was danger lest that action, which was never to be well justified, and which the Leaguers would certainly cause to pass in the world for tyrannical and perfidious, might raise a rebellion in the greatest part of France, which had already declared so loudly for that prince, whom they regarded as the pillar of religion, and would afterwards look on as the martyr of it. But the rest, who believed it impossible on that occasion to observe the ordinary forms of law and justice, and thought that, the head being once cut off, the body of the League would immediately fall like a dead body, were of opinion, that he should be dispatched with all possible speed, which was easy to perform, especially in the castle, where the Duke was almost hourly in the king’s power, whom he had in no manner of distrust, as sufficiently appeared by his lodging there.