the rights of
the Church, and would have done so sooner had he not feared the
appearance of submitting to the menaces and orders of the Pope, who
pretended to reduce to a condition of vassalage the most noble kingdom
of France, which had never been raised but from God. Peter Flotte dwelt
especially on this latter argument, and appealed in turn to the
interests of the nobility and of the clergy, and to national pride. The
fiery Count of Artois arose, and exclaimed that even if the King
submitted to the encroachments of the Pope, the nobility would not
suffer them, and that the gentry would never acknowledge any temporal
superior other than the King. The nobility and the Third Estate
confirmed these words by their acclamations, and swore to sacrifice
their properties and lives to defend the temporal independence of the
kingdom. A Norman advocate, named Dubosc, procurator of the commune of
Coutances, accused the Pope, in writing, of heresy for having wanted to
despoil the King of the independence of the crown which he held from
God. The embarrassment of the clergy was extreme; the members of the
Church, fearing to be crushed in the crash between King and Pope, asked
time for deliberation; their declaration in the assembly then being
held, was insisted upon; already cries arose around them that whoever
did not subscribe to the oath would be held as an enemy of the State;
they acquiesced, satisfied apparently by an appearance of violence which
would serve them for an excuse at Rome. They acknowledged themselves
obliged, in common with the other orders, to defend the rights of the
King and of the kingdom, whether they held estates from the King or not;
then they prayed the King to be allowed to go to the council convoked by
the Pope; the King and the barons declared themselves formally opposed.

The three orders then separated, so as to write to the court at Rome
each its own side of the affair; the letters of the nobility and of the
Third Estate--which as may be imagined were all prepared in advance by
the agents of the King, and were only subscribed to and sealed by the
assistants--were addressed, not to the Pope, but to the college of
cardinals. The despatch of the barons expresses rudely the tortuous and
unreasonable enterprises of him who, at present, is at the seat and
government of the Church, and declares that neither the nobility nor the
universities nor the people require correction or imposition of any
trouble, whe