ication with it; the Pithou family,
represented by their head, Peter Pithou, a barrister at Troyes and a man
highly thought of, were in correspondence with the Reformers, especially
with Lefevre of Etaples." [_Histoire de la Ville de Troyes et de la
Champagne meridionale,_ by T. Boutiot, 1873, t. iii. p. 379.] And thus
was going on throughout almost the whole of France, partly in the path of
liberty, partly in that of concessions, partly in that of hardships, the
work of the Reformation, too weak as yet and too disconnected to engage
to any purpose in a struggle, but even now sufficiently wide-spread and
strong to render abortive any attempt to strangle it.

The defeat at Pavia and the captivity of Francis I. at Madrid placed the
governing power for thirteen months in the hands of the most powerful
foes of the Reformation, the regent Louise of Savoy and the chancellor
Duprat. They used it unsparingly, with the harsh indifference of
politicians who will have, at any price, peace within their dominions and
submission to authority. It was under their regimen that there took
place the first martyrdom decreed and executed in France upon a partisan
of the Reformation for an act of aggression and offence against the
Catholic church. John Leclerc, a wool-carder at Meaux, seeing a bull
of indulgences affixed to the door of Meaux cathedral, had torn it down,
and substituted for it a placard in which the pope was described as
Antichrist. Having been arrested on the spot, he was, by decree of the
Parliament of Paris, whipped publicly, three days consecutively, and
branded on the forehead by the hangman in the presence of his mother, who
cried, "Jesus Christ forever!" He was banished, and retired in July,
1525, to Metz; and there he was working at his trade when he heard that a
solemn procession was to take place, next day, in the environs of the
town. In his blind zeal he went and broke down the images at the feet of
which the Catholics were to have burned incense. Being arrested on his
return to the town, he, far from disavowing the deed, acknowledged it and
gloried in it. He was sentenced to a horrible punishment; his right hand
was cut off, his nose was torn out, pincers were applied to his arms, his
nipples were plucked out, his head was confined in two circlets of
red-hot iron, and, whilst he was still chanting, in a loud voice, this
versicle from the cxvth Psalm,--

"Their idols are silver and gold,