Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew (1st ed. vol 3).djvu/105

 compiled chiefly from the Fathers of the Christian church. Most of his works having contained such materials, with only an occasional summing up and verdict, it was conjectured that he was a negative theologian. But his distinct doctrinal views concerning the way of salvation are to be found in his “Five Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge.” In his Exposition of the Epistles to the Seven Churches, the reader will perceive his decided and increasingly strong sentiments concerning Church-Government. Archbishop Trench’s private relationships are all Huguenot. A descendant of the old Seigneurs de la Tranche, and the best known representative of Bishop Chenevix, he is a nephew of the first Lord Ashtown, also a cousin, and (through his wife, née the Hon. Frances Mary Trench) a brother-in-law of the present Lord Ashtown.

The name among the victims of the St Bartholomew massacre, that is remembered with the greatest admiration and commiseration, is Admiral Coligny. My younger readers should be informed that he was a great military commander (the title of admiral not having been then made over to the Naval Service); also that Coligny was his title of nobility, and not his surname. The family name was De Chatillon; there were three brothers in that generation. The youngest was François de Chatillon, Sieur d’Andelot, and usually called Andelot; he died in 1569. Gaspard de Chatillon, Comte de Coligny, the second brother, was the Admiral of France. The eldest brother demands a memoir among Protestant exiles.

Odet de Chatillon, commonly called the Cardinal de Chatillon, was born on the 10th July 1517. It must be remembered that this date is antecedent to the Protestant Reformation; and that all the brothers, being born during the undisturbed reign of Romanist superstition, were converted to Protestantism. The dignity of Cardinal, with which Odet was invested, was no better than a temporal honour — a decoration or compliment conferred on him on the 7th November 1533, that is to say, when he was only sixteen years of age, by Pope Clement VII. At the same date he was consecrated as Archbishop of Toulouse. In 1535 he obtained the Bishopric of Beauvais, which, along with ample revenues, included the dignity and privileges of a Peer of France. In 1544, being so well endowed as an ecclesiastic, he resigned all his own heritage to his brothers. His tendencies towards Protestantism arose from aspirations after religious life. In 1554, he issued his Constitutions Synodales, in order to reform ecclesiastical abuses in his diocese. In 1564 he appeared as a doctrinal reformer. In the month of April of that year, he administered the Lord’s Supper according to the rites of the French Protestant Church in his palace at Beauvais. His neighbours raised a riot, in which his own life was threatened, and a schoolmaster as his protegé was killed. He then deliberately renounced his ecclesiastical dignities, and assumed the title of Comte de Beauvais. The Pope cited him to appear before the Inquisition,- but he took an early opportunity to wear his Cardinal’s dress among the King’s Councillors, in order to proclaim his defiance of the Papal authority. And on the 1st of December he married Elizabeth, daughter of Samson de Hauteville (a Norman gentleman) and Marguerite de Lore. As during this year, so afterwards, he openly acted as a leading Huguenot negociator. In 1568 he ncgociated the peace of Longjumeau, avoiding all Bourbon schemes, and confining his demands to the free exercise of the Protestant religion. Queen Catherine de Medicis attempted, in violation of the peace, and by a coup d’etât, to seize the Protestant leaders, who, however, got secret information, and Condé and Coligny retired precipitately within La Rochelle, whither the Queen of Navarre and her son quickly followed them. The Cardinal, in August 1568, hurried from his Chateau of Brélé (near Beauvais), hotly pursued. Disguised as a sailor, he barely succeeded in embarking at Sainte-Marie-du-Mont for England. His countess accompanied him, and their voyage was safely accomplished. Queen Elizabeth received him as a Prince, lodged him in Sion House, and gave him audiences on Huguenot affairs. Dressed in black flowing garments, and conspicuous with his noble brow and venerable aspect, he was always treated by our Queen with demonstrative affection as one of her intimate friends — so much so, that the Londoners declared that the ambassador from the Prince of Condé was a greater man than the veritable French Ambassador. As he was always styled the Cardinal de Chatillon, the