ABSTRACT
Moreover, this great king [Francis I] bearing in mind the services normally rendered to him by the nobility, and unable to recompense them with money from his domain or from his revenues because of the need to meet the costs of his long, expensive wars, hit upon a means of rewarding those who had served him well, by granting them abbeys and church property instead of leaving them in the hands of useless people, cloistered monks Now we must commend our great king Henry IV and acknowledge the great debt which the nobility of this kingdom owes to him for not minding the clamour and bawling of members of the clergy as they seek to deprive the nobility of abbeys and church property, to appropriate them all for themselves and leave the nobility far behind His Majesty has judged accurately that gallant French gentlemen of noble extraction and great merit who hold conscientiousness and honour in such esteem know how to manage and maintain the ecclesiastical rewards bestowed upon them by the king as well or better than any number of churchmen of my acquaintance…
