from motives of policy. He was already suspected of
favoring the reformed doctrines, which subsequently he openly espoused.
Indeed, nearly six years before, the English ambassador, Pickering,
after alluding to new measures of persecution devised against the
Protestants, wrote: "Cardinal Chatillon, as I hear, is a great aider of
Lutherans, and hath been a great stay in this matter, which otherwise
had been before now concluded, to the destruction of any man that had
almost spoken of God's Word. Nevertheless, the Protestants here fear
that it cannot come to a much better end, where such a number of bishops
and cardinals bear the swing."[621] Chatillon's enemies hoped, by
placing him on this inquisitorial commission, where his vote would be
powerless in opposition to that of the other two cardinals, to compel
him either to enter the rank of persecutors, or declare himself openly
for the Reformation, and thus destroy his own credit and that of his
powerful family.[622]

[Sidenote: The bull confirmed by Henry II.]

The papal bull was promptly confirmed by the king, who, in a declaration
given at Compiegne, on the twenty-fourth of July, 1557, permitted "his
very dear cousins," the three cardinals, to exercise the office of
inquisitors-general throughout the monarchy. From sentences given by
their subalterns, this document permitted an appeal to be taken, but it
was to a body appointed for the purpose by the inquisitors
themselves.[623] Parliament, however, again interposed the prerogative
it had assumed, of remonstrance and delay, and the king's declaration,
as well as the papal bull, remained inoperative.[624]

[Sidenote: Judicial sympathy with the victims.]

[Sidenote: Edict of Compiegne, July 24, 1557.]

It is not surprising, perhaps, that the institution of the sacred
office, with its bloody code and relentless tribunal, was pressed so
repeatedly upon the French monarch and parliament for their acceptance.
The number of the Protestants was not only increasing in a most alarming
manner,[625] but the very judges before whom, when discovered, the
Protestants were brought, began to show signs of compassion, if not of
sympathy. So it happened that, in one provincial town, two persons
caught with the packages of "Lutheran" books they had brought into
France, after they had made an explicit confession of their faith, were
condemned, not to the flames, but to the trifling punishment of public
whipping; and scarcely had the b