Henry M. Baird · 320 of 379
CHAPTER XII · The Huguenot ministers and delegates.
On Tuesday, the ninth of September, 1561, the long-expected conference was to be opened. That morning, at ten o'clock, a procession of ministers and delegates of the Reformed churches left St. Germain-en-Laye on horseback for the village of Poissy. The ministers, twelve in number, were men of note: Théodore de Bèze, or Beza, with whom the reader is already well acquainted; Augustin Marlorat, a native of Lorraine, formerly a monk, but now famous in the Protestant ranks, and the leading pastor in Rouen, a man over fifty years of age; François de Paul, a learned theologian and the founder of the churches of Montélimart, a delegate from Provence; Jean Raymond Merlin, professor of Hebrew at Geneva, and chaplain of Admiral Coligny; Jean Malot, pastor at Paris; François de Morel, who had presided in the First National Synod of 1559, and had recently been given to the Duchess Renée of Ferrara, as her private chaplain; Nicholas Folion, surnamed La Vallée, a former doctor of the Sorbonne, now pastor at Orleans; Claude de la Boissière, of Saintes; Jean Bouquin, of Oléron; Jean Virel; Jean de la Tour, a patriarch of nearly seventy years; and Nicholas des Gallars, who, after having been a prominent preacher at Geneva and Paris, had for the past two years ministered to the large congregation of French refugees in London. It was a body of Huguenot theologians unsurpassed for ability by any others within the kingdom.
So high ran the excitement of the populace, stirred up by frequent appeals to the worst passions in the human breast, and by highly-colored accounts of the boldness with which the "new doctrines" had for weeks been preached within the precincts of the court, that serious apprehension was entertained lest Beza and his companions might be assaulted by the way. The peaceable ministers of religion were, therefore, accompanied by a strong escort of one hundred mounted archers of the royal guard. After a ride of less than half an hour, they reached the nuns' convent, in which the prelates had been holding their sessions.
