Note 782 — Chapter IX

Weiss, La chambre ardente, cxlv. The early identification of the French nobility with Calvinism has been exaggerated. One must be cautious in the use of the term “nobility,” for it is to be remembered that the eldest son received the largest share of the inheritance and that younger sons and small nobles, in many instances, had much in common with the small farmers in the provinces. As Mr. Armstrong aptly says: “All that separated them from their neighbors was ‘privilege,’ and to this they clung all the more desperately.”—Armstrong, The French Wars of Religion, 4. In the decade between 1550 and 1560 there is an increase in the number of aristocratic names identified with French Protestantism, but it was not till 1557 that the first great noble espoused its cause and that covertly. This was Antoine of Bourbon. In the same year Coligny and D’Andelot also inclined to it (Whitehead, Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France, 63-66). On the whole matter, see Lavisse, Histoire de France, V, Pt. II, 238-42.