grippa d'Aubigne, ii. 5.

[840] "A quoi ses ennemis trouverent a redire, publiant qu'il n'apartenoit
qu'aux _princes_ d'epouser par procurateur. Mais ceux qui parloient des
choses sans passion, imputoient ces sortes de discours a medisance,
soutenant de leur cote qu'il ne pouvoit faire autrement, puisqu'il n'y
avoit pas de surete pour lui a l'aller epouser," etc. Vie de Coligny, 386.

[841] A very interesting account of the long imprisonment of Coligny's
widow is to be found in Count Jules Delaborde's monograph, "Jacqueline
d'Entremont," _apud_ Bulletin de la Societe de l'hist. du prot. fr., xvi.
(1867) 220-246.

[842] A few months before the admiral's departure from La Rochelle, there
had been held in this Huguenot asylum a convocation of historical
importance. The sessions of the seventh national synod, lasting from the
second to the eleventh of April, 1571, were consumed in important
deliberations respecting the doctrines and discipline of the reformed
church (see Aymon, Tous les synodes, i. 98-111). The Queen of Navarre, the
Princes of Navarre and Conde, Count Louis of Nassau, and Admiral Coligny
were present. At the request of the synod, they added their signatures to
those of the ministers and elders, upon three copies of the Confession of
Faith, engrossed on parchment, which were to be kept at La Rochelle, in
Bearn, and at Geneva respectively (see the eighth general article). The
moderator on this occasion was Theodore Beza, who had been specially
invited to France. The reformer was certainly not destitute of courage,
for he could not have forgotten the dangers to which he had been exposed
on previous visits to France. They were even greater than Beza himself
probably knew. In June, 1563, after the conclusion of the first civil war,
there was a rumor at Brussels that Beza could not return to Geneva,
because of a quarrel he had had with Calvin. Thereupon, the Duchess of
Parma, Regent of the Netherlands, suspecting that he might be tempted to
come through the Spanish dominions, issued secret orders that the
frontiers should be watched, and offered a reward of one thousand florins
to any one who should bring him, dead or alive. He was described as "homme
de moienne stature, ayant barbe a demy blanche, et le visage hault et
large." Letters of the Duchess of Parma, June 11th and 25th, 1563, _apud_
Charles Paillard, Histoire des troubles religieux de Valenciennes (Paris
and Brussels, 1875, 1876), iii. 339, 340, 356.