s I., prodigiously active,
and excelling in secret negotiations. He entered the military service at
an early age, was taken prisoner at Pavia (1525) and shared the
captivity of Francis I. His skill and devotion attached him to the king.
His missions to Spain, Italy, England and Germany were innumerable; sent
three times to England in 1529-1530, he was occupied with the execution
of the treaty of Cambrai and also with the question of Henry VIII.'s
divorce, and with the help of his brother Jean, then bishop of Paris, he
obtained a decision favourable to Henry VIII. from the Sorbonne (July 2,
1530). From 1532 to 1536, though he went three times to England, he was
principally employed in uniting the German princes against Charles V.;
in May 1532 he signed the treaty of Scheyern with the dukes of Bavaria,
the landgrave of Hesse, and the elector of Saxony, and in January 1534
the treaty of Augsburg. During the war of 1537 Francis I. sent him on
missions to Piedmont; he was governor of Turin from December 1537 till
the end of 1539, and subsequently replacing Marshal d'Annebaut as
governor of the whole of Piedmont, he displayed great capacity in
organization. But at the end of 1542, overwhelmed by work, he was
compelled to return to France, and died near Lyons on the 9th of January
1543. Rabelais, an eye-witness, has left a moving story of his death
(_Pantagruel_, iii. ch. 21, and iv. ch. 27). He was buried in the
cathedral of Le Mans, where a monument was erected to his memory, with
the inscription, "Ci git Langey, dont la plume et l'epee Ont surmonte
Ciceron et Pompee"; Charles V. is said to have remarked that Langey, by
his own unaided efforts, did more mischief and thwarted more schemes
than all the French together.

Guillaume du Bellay was the devoted protector of freedom of thought;
without actually joining the reformers, he defended the innovators
against their fanatical opponents. In 1534-1535 he even tried,
unsuccessfully, to bring about a meeting between Francis I. and
Melanchthon; and in 1541 he intervened in favour of the Vaudois.
Rabelais was the most famous of his clients, and followed him to
Piedmont from 1540 to 1542. Guillaume was himself a valuable historian,
and a clear and precise writer. He imitated Livy in his _Ogdoades_, a
history of the rivalry between Francis I. and the emperor from 1521, of
which, though he had no time to finish it, important fragments remain,
inserted by his brother Martin du Bellay (