The king and the Parliament sent a force thither; Brizard, councillor in the high chamber, captain of the district, had the fathers removed, and put them in security in his own house.

The inquiry was prosecuted deliberately and temperately.

It brought out that John Chastel had often heard repeated at his college "that it was allowable to kill kings, even the king regnant, when they were not in the church or approved of by the pope." The accused formally maintained this maxim, which was found written out and dilated upon under his own hand in a note-book seized at his father's.

"Was it necessary, pray," said Henry IV., laughing, "that the Jesuits should be convicted by my mouth ?" John Chastel was sentenced to the most cruel punishment; and he underwent it on the 20th of December, 1594, by torch-light, before the principal entrance of Notre-Dame, without showing any symptom of regret.

His mother and his sisters were set at liberty.