convenience,
transferred the court temporarily to the city of Lyons, where, under the
protection of Margaret of Angouleme, the most evangelical preachers of
France had been allowed to proclaim the tenets of the reformers within
the churches and in the hearing of thousands of eager listeners. The
queen mother had not yet ventured decidedly to depart from the tolerant
system hitherto pursued by the crown.[257] But the announcement of the
capture of Francis effected a complete revolution in her policy. There
is no inherent improbability in the story that Chancellor Duprat--the
statesman and ecclesiastic who had gained so strong an ascendancy over
the mind of Louise that he was shortly promoted to the Archbishopric of
Sens and rewarded with the rich abbey of Saint
Benoit-sur-Loire--insinuated to the queen mother that the misfortunes
befalling France were tokens of the Divine displeasure. Had Francis
spared no exertions to destroy the first germs of the heresy so
insidiously introduced into his kingdom, he would not now, said the
churchman, be languishing in the dungeons of Milan or Madrid. Nor could
hopes be entertained of his deliverance, and of a return of Heaven's
favor, unless the queen mother bestirred herself to retrieve his mistake
by the introduction of new measures to crush heresy. Thus is the
chancellor said to have argued, and to have earned the cardinal's hat at
the Pope's hands. However this may be, it is certain that motives of
policy were no less influential than the pious considerations which,
perhaps, might have carried full as much conviction had they come from
the lips of a more exemplary prelate.[258] The regent was certainly not
ignorant of the fact that the support of Clement the Seventh, now
specially needed in the delicate diplomacy lying immediately before her,
could best be secured by proving to the pontiff's satisfaction that the
house of Valois was clear of all suspicion of harboring or fostering the
"Lutheran" doctrines and their adherents.

The ordinary appliances for the suppression of heresy--a duty entrusted
by canon law, so far as the preliminary search and the trial of the
suspected was concerned, to the bishops and their courts--had
confessedly proved inadequate. The prelates were in great part
non-residents, and could not from a distance narrowly watch the progress
of the objectionable tenets in their dioceses. One or two of their
number were accused of culpable sluggishness, if not of