tainly dark enough. Catharine and Navarre had sent Lansac to assure
the Pope that they purposed to live in and defend the Roman Catholic
religion. Sulpice had gone on a like mission to Spain. It was time,
Throkmorton plainly told Queen Elizabeth, that she should show as great
readiness in maintaining the Protestant religion as Ferrara and his
associates showed in striving to overthrow it. And in a private despatch
to Cecil, written the same day, he urged the secretary to dissuade her
Majesty from longer retaining candles and cross on the altar of the royal
chapel, at a time when even doctors of the Sorbonne consented to the
removal of images of all sorts from over the altar in places of
worship.[35]

From Saverne the Cardinal of Lorraine returned to his archbishopric of
Rheims, while the duke, accompanied by the Cardinal of Guise, proceeded in
the direction of the French capital. On his route he stopped at Joinville,
one of the estates of the family, recently erected in their favor into a
principality. Here he was joined by his wife, Anne d'Este; here, too, he
listened to fresh complaints made by his mother, Antoinette of Bourbon,
against the insolence of the neighboring town of Vassy, where a
considerable portion of the inhabitants had lately had the audacity to
embrace the reformed faith.

[Sidenote: Vassy in Champagne.]

[Sidenote: Origin of the Huguenot Church.]

Vassy, an important town of Champagne--though shorn of much of its
influence by the removal of many of its dependencies to increase the
dignity of Joinville--and one of the places assigned to Mary of Scots for
her maintenance, had apparently for some time contained a few professors
of the "new doctrines." It was, however, only in October, 1561, after the
Colloquy of Poissy, that it was visited by a Protestant minister, who,
during a brief sojourn, organized a church with elders and deacons.
Notwithstanding the disadvantage of having no pastor, and of having
notoriously incurred the special hatred of the Guises, the reformed
community grew with marvellous rapidity. For the Gospel was preached not
merely in the printed sermons read from the pulpit, but by the lips of
enthusiastic converts. When, after a short absence, the founder of the
church of Vassy returned to the scene of his labors, he came into
collision with the Bishop of Chalons, whose diocese included this town.
The bishop, unaccustomed to preach, set up a monk in opposition; but no
one would co