Meanwhile Catherine had to face the States General, summoned by the late King in August 1560. While the Guises were still in power, strict orders had been given to see that none but ardent Romanists should be elected; but the excitement of the times could not be restrained by any management. It was nearly half a century since a King of France had invited a declaration of the opinions of his subjects; the last meeting of the States General had been in 1484.[214] Catherine watched the elections, and the expression of sentiments which they called forth. She saw that the Protestants were active. Calvinist ministers traversed the West and the South almost unhindered, encouraging the people to assert their liberties. They were even permitted to address some of the assemblies met to elect representatives. A minister, Charles Dalbiac, expounded the Confession of Faith to the meeting of the nobles at Angers, and showed how the Roman Church had enslaved and changed the whole of the Christian faith and practice. In other places it was said that Antoine de Bourbon had no right to allow Catherine to assume the Regency, and that he ought to be forced to take his proper place. The air seemed full of menaces against the Regent and in favour of the Princes of the Blood. Catherine hastened to place the King of Navarre in a position of greater dignity. She shared the Regency nominally with the premier Prince of the Blood, who was Lieutenant-General of France. If Antoine had been a man of resolution, he might have insisted on a large share in the government of the country, but his easy, careless disposition made him plastic in the hands of Catherine, and she could write to her daughter that he was very obedient, and issued no order without her permission.
The Estates met at Orléans on the 13th of December. The opening speech by the Chancellor, Michel de l'Hôpital, showed that the Regent and her councillors were at least inclined to a policy of tolerance. The three orders (Clergy, Nobles, and Third Estate), he said, had been summoned to find remedies for the divisions which existed within the kingdom; and these, he believed, were due to religion. He could not help recognising that religious beliefs, good or bad, tended to excite burning passions. He could not avoid seeing that a common religion was a stricter bond of unity than belonging to the same race or living under the same laws. Might they not all wait for the decision of a General Council? Might they not cease to use the irritating epithets of _Lutherans_, _Huguenots_, _Papists_, and remember that they were all good Christians. The spokesmen of the three orders were heard at the second sitting. Dr. Quintin, one of the Regents of the University of Paris, voiced the Clergy. He enlarged against the proposals which were to be brought forward by the other two orders to despoil the revenues of the Church, to attempt its reform by the civil power, and to grant toleration and even liberty of worship to heretics. Coligny begged the Regent to note that Quintin had called subjects of the King heretics, and the spokesman of the Clergy apologised. Jacques de Silly, Baron de Rochefort, and Jean Lange, an advocate of Bordeaux, who spoke for the Nobles and for the Third Estate, declaimed against the abuses of ecclesiastical courts, and the avarice and ignorance of the clergy.