nment and great nobles began to
join their ranks. In 1546 the Bishop of Nimes protected them openly,
being himself suspected, probably with justice, of Calvinism. In 1548
a lieutenant-general was among those prosecuted for heresy. Anthony of
Bourbon, a descendant of Louis IX, a son of the famous Charles,
Constable of France, and husband of Joan d 'Albret, queen of Navarre,
who was a daughter of Margaret d'Angouleme, became a Protestant.
[Sidenote: 1555] About the same time the great Admiral Coligny was
converted, though it was some years before he openly professed his
faith. His brother, d'Andelot, also adhered to the Calvinists but was
later persuaded by the king and by his wife to go back to the Catholic
fold.

So strong had the Protestants become that the {206} French government
was compelled against its will to tolerate them in fact if not in
principle, and to recognize them as a party in the state with a
quasi-constitutional position. The synod held at Paris in May, 1559,
was evidence that the first stage in the evolution of French
Protestantism was complete. This assembly drew up a creed called the
_Confessio Gallicana_, setting forth in forty articles the purest
doctrine of Geneva. Besides affirming belief in the common articles of
Christianity, this confession asserted the dogmas of predestination,
justification by faith only, and the distinctive Calvinistic doctrine
of the eucharist. The worship of saints was condemned and the
necessity of a church defined. For this church an organization and
discipline modelled on that of Geneva was provided. The country was
divided into districts, the churches within which were to send to a
central consistory representatives both clerical and lay, the latter to
be at least equal in number to the former. Over the church of the
whole nation there was to be a national synod or "Colloque" to which
each consistory was to send one clergyman and one or two lay elders.

Alarmed by the growth of the Protestants, Henry II was just preparing,
after the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, to grapple with them more
earnestly than ever, when he died of a wound accidentally received in a
tournament. [Sidenote: July 10, 1559] His death, hailed by Calvin as
a merciful dispensation of Providence, conveniently marks the ending of
one epoch and the beginning of another. For the previous forty years
France had been absorbed in the struggle with the vast empire of the
Hapsburgs. For the