, for its "immense services," by a subsequent
order he conferred nobility upon the "mayor," "echevins" and
"conseillers" of the city, both present and future, as well as
upon their children forever. (Letters of January 8, 1372/3,
Arcere, ii., Preuves, 673-675.)

The extraordinary prerogatives of which this was the origin
were recognized and confirmed by subsequent monarchs,
especially by Louis the Eleventh, Charles the Eighth, Louis
the Twelfth, and Francis the First. (Callot, 11.) The
resistance of the inhabitants to the exaction of the obnoxious
"gabelle," or tax upon salt, did indeed, toward the end of the
reign of the last-named king (1542), bring them temporarily
under his displeasure; but, with the exception of a
modification in their municipal government, made in 1530, and
revoked early in the reign of Henry the Second, the city
retained its quasi-independence without interruption until the
outbreak of the religious wars.

As we have seen (_ante_, p. 227), La Rochelle was in 1552 the
scene of the judicial murder of at least two Protestants. The
constancy of one of the sufferers had been the means of
converting many to the reformed doctrines, and among others
Claude d'Angliers, the presiding judge, whose name may still
be read at the foot of their sentence. (Arcere, i. 329.) So
rapidly had those doctrines spread, that on Sunday, May 31,
1562, the Lord's Supper was celebrated according to the
fashion of Geneva, not in one of the churches, but on the
great square of the hay-market, in a temporary enclosure shut
in on all sides by tapestries and covered with an awning of
canvas. More than eight thousand persons took part in the
exercises. But if the morning's services were remarkable, the
sequel was not less singular. "As the disease of
image-breaking was almost universal," says an old chronicler,
"it was communicated by contagion to the inhabitants of this
city, in such wise that, that very afternoon about three or
four o'clock, five hundred men, who were under arms and had
just received the same sacrament, went through all the
churches and dashed the images in pieces. Howbeit it was a
folly conducted with wisdom, seeing that this action passed
without any one being wounded or injured." (P. Vincent, _apud_
Callot, 34, an