The last instance of such adherence had a special importance.

At the time of Henry III.'s rupture with the League, the Parliament of Paris had been split in two; the royalists had followed the king to Tours, the partisans of the League had remained at Paris.

After the accession of Henry IV., the Parliament of Tours, with the president, Achille de Harlay, as its head, increased from day to day, and soon reached two hundred members, whilst the Parliament of Paris, or Brisson Parliament, as it was called from its leader's name, had only sixty-eight left.

Brisson, on undertaking the post, actually thought it right to take the precaution of protesting privately, making a declaration in the presence of notaries "that he so acted by constraint only, and that he shrank from any rebellion against his king and sovereign lord." It was, indeed, on the ground of the heredity of the monarchy and by virtue of his own proper rights that Henry IV.

had ascended the throne; and M.Poirson says quite correctly, in his learned _Histoire du Regne d'Henri IV._ [t.