m audaciam
caveretur." Beza, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 1104: Beza to Calvin, Sept. 12, 1561, _ubi supra_.]

[Footnote 1105: Not unreasonably did the queen mother allege--and none
knew it better than she--that even written engagements derive their
chief value from the good faith of those that make them: "Que il estoit
malaise mesmes avec l'escripture d'empescher de decevoir celuy qui ha
intention de tromper." La Place, 157.]

[Footnote 1106: "Sans rien chercher que la gloire de Dieu, de laquelle
elle estimoit qu'ils fussent studieux et amateurs." La Place, 157.
Compare the letter of Catharine to the Bp. of Rennes, Sept. 14, 1561,
_apud_ Le Laboureur, Add. to Castelnau, i, 733.]

[Footnote 1107: Beza to Calvin, Sept. 12, 1561, _ubi supra_; La Place,
157; Hist. eccles. des egl. ref., i. 314.]

CHAPTER XII.

THE COLLOQUY OF POISSY AND THE EDICT OF JANUARY.

[Sidenote: The Huguenot ministers and delegates.]

On Tuesday, the ninth of September, 1561, the long-expected conference
was to be opened. That morning, at ten o'clock, a procession of
ministers and delegates of the Reformed churches left St.
Germain-en-Laye on horseback for the village of Poissy. The ministers,
twelve in number, were men of note: Theodore de Beze, or Beza, with whom
the reader is already well acquainted; Augustin Marlorat, a native of
Lorraine, formerly a monk, but now famous in the Protestant ranks, and
the leading pastor in Rouen, a man over fifty years of age; Francois de
Saint Paul, a learned theologian and the founder of the churches of
Montelimart, a delegate from Provence; Jean Raymond Merlin, professor of
Hebrew at Geneva, and chaplain of Admiral Coligny; Jean Malot, pastor at
Paris; Francois de Morel, who had presided in the First National Synod
of 1559, and had recently been given to the Duchess Renee of Ferrara, as
her private chaplain; Nicholas Folion, surnamed La Vallee, a former
doctor of the Sorbonne, now pastor at Orleans; Claude de la Boissiere,
of Saintes; Jean Bouquin, of Oleron; Jean Virel; Jean de la Tour, a
patriarch of nearly seventy years; and Nicholas des Gallars, who, after
having been a prominent preacher at Geneva and Paris, had for the past
two years ministered to the large congregation of French refugees in
London. It was a body of Huguenot theologians unsurpassed for ability by
any others within the kingdom.[1108]

So high ran the excitement of the populace, stirred up by frequent
appeals to the worst pa