Individual condemnations and executions abounded after these general measures; between the 2d of August and the 31st of December, 1559, eighteen persons were burned alive for open heresy, or for having refused to communicate according to the rites of the Catholic church, or go to mass, or for having hawked about forbidden books.

Finally, in December, the five councillors of the Parliament of Paris, whom, six months previously, Henry II.

had ordered to be arrested and shut up in the Bastille, were dragged from prison and brought to trial.

The chief of them, Anne Dubourg, nephew of Anthony Dubourg, Chancellor of France under Francis I., defended himself with pious and patriotic persistency, being determined to exhaust all points of law and all the chances of justice he could hope for without betraying his faith.

Everything shows that he had nothing to hope for from his judges; one of them, the President Minard, as he was returning from the palace on the evening of December 12, 1559, was killed by a pistol-shot; the assassin could not be discovered; but the crime, naturally ascribed to some friend of Dubourg, served only to make certain and to hasten the death of the prisoner on trial.