n hour of weakness succumb to the temptation. In his Hist.
universelle, i. 95, D'Aubigne makes the same assertion with great
positiveness: "L'Hospital, homme de grand estime, luy succeda, quoyqu'il
eust este des conjurez pour le faict d'Amboise. Ce que je maintiens
contre tout ce qui en a este escrit, pource que l'original de
l'entreprise fut consigne entre les mains de mon pere, ou estoit son
seing tout du long entre celuy de Dandelot et d'un Spifame: chose que
j'ai faict voir a plusieurs personnes de marque."]

[Footnote 877: La Planche, 305; La Place, 38; De Thou, ii. 776; Davila,
p. 29. I cannot refrain from inserting La Planche's worthy estimate of
his course and its results: "Car pour certain, encores que s'il eust
prins un court chemin pour s'opposer virilement au mal, il seroit plus a
louer, et Dieu, peut-estre, eust beny sa Constance, si est-ce qu'autant
qu'on en peut juger, _luy seul, par ses moderes deportemens a este
l'instrument duquel Dieu s'est servy pour retenir plusieurs flots
impetueux, ou fussent submerges tous les Francois_." _Ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 878: Throkmorton to Cecil, June 24, 1560, State Paper Office;
printed in Wright, Queen Elizabeth, i. 32, 33.]

[Footnote 879: La Planche, 338-343.]

[Footnote 880: Ibid., 315; De Thou, ii. 787, 788.]

[Footnote 881: The long address delivered to the two brothers at Nerac,
and reproduced verbatim by La Planche (318-338), is a very complete
summary of the views of the Huguenots at this juncture.]

[Footnote 882: Letter of Cardinal Lorraine to the Bishop of Limoges,
French ambassador to Philip the Second, July 28, 1560. The council "we
hold to be the sole and only remedy for our ills," is the minister's
language. Although the state of affairs was better than it had been, yet
"so many persons were imbued with these opinions, that it was not
possible to find out on whom reliance could be placed." Negociations
sous Francois II., 442-444.]

[Footnote 883: Ibid., _ubi supra_; La Planche, 349; De Thou, ii. 782.]

[Footnote 884: La Planche, _ubi supra_. An assembly of notables was, as
the term imports, a body consisting, not of representatives of the three
orders, regularly summoned under the forms observed in the holding of
the States General, but of the most prominent men of the kingdom,
arbitrarily selected and invited by the crown to act as its advisers on
some extraordinary emergency. "Telles assemblees," says Agrippa
d'Aubigne, "ont este appelees _pe