Note 61 — XVI.—To the Ministers of the Church of Basle.

William du Bellay, Seigneur of Langey, one of the cleverest diplomatists under the reign of Francis the First. Born in 1491, he died the 9th January 1543. William du Bellay and his brother John, the Bishop of Paris, had shown themselves favourable to the first ideas of Reformation, and had consulted with the King for the purpose of calling Melanchthon into France, there to put in train the work of religious pacification.—Bèze, Hist. Eccl. tom. i. p. 10; Florimond de Remond, Histoire de la Naissance et du Progrès de l' Hérésie, liv. vii. p. 817. The last mentioned author has given the letters which passed on this occasion between Melanchthon and Francis I. The French Protestants formed great expectations from Du Bellay. In these terms Bucer wrote to the physician Ulrich Chelius, 17th Aug. 1534: "Dominus excitet multos isti heroi similes, et spes erit forte ut emergat aliquando regnum Christi."—Sturm, on his part, wrote to Bucer, 17th Nov. 1535; "Si Langæus isthuc veniat, obsecro, habe eum in numero eorum qui quidvis pati volunt pro Christo."—MSS. de Strasbourg.