ies, and that a place would shortly be assigned for their use in the
vicinity.[531] Unrebuked by the queen or her son for his flagrant
disobedience, Nemours received nothing but plaudits from the fanatical
adherents of the religion he pretended to maintain, and was honored by the
Pope, Pius the Fifth (on the fifth of July, 1568), with a special brief,
in which he was praised for being the first to set a resplendent example
of resistance to the execution of an unchristian peace.[532]

Marshal Tavannes, in Burgundy, earned equal gratitude for his opposition
to the concession of Protestant rights. Not content with remonstrance
respecting a peace which had excited every one "to raise his voice against
the king and Catharine," and with dark hints of the danger of handling so
carelessly a border province like Burgundy,[533] he openly favored the
revival of those "Confraternities of the Holy Ghost" which Charles had so
lately condemned and prohibited. Being himself detained by illness, two of
his sons were present at a meeting of one of these seditious assemblages,
held in Dijon, the provincial capital, where, before a great concourse of
people, the most inflammatory language was freely uttered.[534]

[Sidenote: The "Christian and Royal League."]

[Sidenote: Insubordination to royal authority.]

At Troyes, the capital of Champagne, a similar association assumed the
designation of "the Christian and Royal League." The document, containing
the oath taken by the clergy whom the king's lieutenant had associated
with the nobility and the provincial estates in the "holy" bond, is still
extant, with the signatures of the bishop, the deans, canons, and inferior
ecclesiastics appended.[535] The primary object was the maintenance of
"the true Catholic and Roman Church of God;" and after this the
preservation of the crown for the house of Valois was mentioned. It was to
be sustained "against all persons, without excepting any, save the persons
of the king, his sons and brothers, and the queen their mother, and
without regard to any relationship or alliance," and "so long as it might
please God that the signers should be governed according to the Roman and
Apostolic Church."[536] In less public utterances the spirit of
insubordination to the regal authority made itself understood even more
clearly. When the formation of such associations was objected to, on the
ground of the king's prohibition, the response given by those who
pretended