ion of the cup should be made to his
subjects. Ferdinand I, without becoming a thoroughgoing partisan of the
papal policy, accepted the bargain as seemingly the shortest road to the
end which, for the sake of the peace of the empire, he had at heart.
Thus, notwithstanding the continued opposition of the French bishops,
the decrees concerning the episcopate began to shape themselves more
easily, and the Pope of his own accord submitted to the council certain
canons of a stringent kind reforming in a similar way the discipline of
the cardinalate (June). And when, in the course of a violent quarrel
about precedence between the kings of France and Spain, the latter,
enraged at his demands not being enforced by the Pope, had threatened,
by insisting on the admission of Protestants to the council,
indefinitely to prolong it, the Emperor intervened against the proposal.
But the conflict between the papal and the episcopal authority seemed
still incapable of solution, and, though Lainez audaciously demanded
the reference of all questions of reform to the sole decision of the
Pope, and denounced the opposition of the French bishops as proceeding
from members of a schismatic church, this opposition steadily continued
in conjunction with that of the Spaniards, and still found a leader in
the Cardinal of Lorraine.

Yet at this very time a change began to be perceptible in the conduct of
this versatile and ambitious prelate. The Cardinal was supposed to have
himself aspired to the office of presiding legate, and, though he had
missed this place of honor and power, the condition of things in France
was such as naturally to incline him in the direction of Rome. The
assassination of his brother Francis, Duke of Guise (February, 1563),
deprived his family and interest of their natural chief, and inclined
Catherine de' Medici to transact with the Huguenots. The Cardinal
accordingly became anxious at the same time to return to France and
prevent the total eclipse of the influence he had hitherto exercised at
court, and to secure himself by an understanding with the Pope.

A letter which about this time arrived from Mary, Queen of Scots,
declaring her readiness to submit to the decrees of the council, and,
should she ascend the throne of England, to reduce that country to
obedience to the holy see, may perhaps be connected with these
overtures. Pius IV, delighted to meet the Cardinal half way, sent
instructions in this sense to the legate