Michel de l'Hôpital (or l'Hospital; 1506 – 13 March 1573) was a French lawyer, diplomat and chancellor during the latter Italian Wars and the early French Wars of Religion. The son of a doctor in the service of Charles III, Duke of Bourbon he spent his early life exiled from France at Bourbon's and then the emperors court. When his father entered the service of the House of Lorraine, he entered the patronage network of Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine. Through his marriage to Marie Morin, he acquired a seat in the Parlement of Paris. In this capacity he drew up the charges for the king, concerning the defenders of Boulogne who surrendered the city in 1544, before taking a role as a diplomat to the Council of Trent in 1547. The following year he assisted Anne d'Este in the details of her inheritance to ensure she could marry Francis, Duke of Guise.
In 1553 he entered Lorraine's service, providing support to the family in return for receiving offices from them. That year they secured for him the position of maître des requêtes for the hôtel du roi, an important post. The following year he was elevated to the chambre des comptes as président, granting him considerable influence in the financial administration of the kingdom. With his patron assuming overall control of the kingdoms finances in the late 1550s, he entered the conseil privé. Early into the reign of Francis II the old chancellor, François Olivier died. Lorraine nominated L'Hôpital as his replacement. An energetic reformer, L'Hôpital moved into conflict with the Parlements to ensure the passing of the Edict of Romorantin. Later that year, conscious of the scale of the financial and religious problems that were affecting the kingdom, he was among those advocating for an Assembly of Notables. The Assembly in turn called for a Estates General, which L'Hôpital opened and sought to direct towards widescale reforms. Unable to achieve quite what he sought, he fought the Parlement to push through the Ordinance of Orléans that resulted from the sessions.
Upon the death of Francis II, L'Hôpital did not fall from the centre of royal politics with his patrons. Instead, he supported Queen mother Catherine de' Medici in her religious policy which increasingly put him at odds with Lorraine. He helped formulate and championed the Edict of 19 April, the Edict of July and the Edict of Saint-Germain. The former two which moderated persecution of Protestantism and the latter of which legalised Protestant worship in France. Throughout this he found himself in opposition to Parlement, which resisted both the intrusions on their authority and any legalisation of Protestantism. After the first civil war in the French Wars of Religion, L'Hôpital entered his period of ascendency. He championed King Charles IX's decision to declare his majority at Rouen, to punish the Paris Parlement for its failure to register the peace treaty. He successfully opposed Lorraine's attempt to implement the Tridentine decrees upon his return from Trent. The next year he accompanied the court on its grand tour, with L'Hôpital berating each Parlement in turn for their impudence and failure to follow the king's will. When the court stopped at Moulins he promulgated a wide reaching set of legal reforms, which sought to combat Venal office, severely curtail the number of jurisdictions and overlapping law codes, and limit the power of governors and certain judges to interpret and execute justice that rightfully flowed from the king. By now his influence was waning and he was forced to abandon much of the edict due to the crown's monetary needs during the second civil war. Lorraine had by now returned to court, and he succeeded in besting L'Hôpital concerning a petition raised by the Dijon Parlement against him.
During the civil war he negotiated with the Prince of Condé who was besieging Paris, and urged concessions to the rebels, for which he received a cold reception. After the Peace of Longjumeau in March 1568, he retired from court in May, increasingly aware that his opinions were no longer received well by Catherine or the court. Returning to court in September he made a last attempt to oppose the crown's acceptance of alienated church lands in return for a war on heresy offered by the Pope. Failing in this he was relieved of his seals of office, and though he remained chancellor until his death, he would no longer exercise its authority. Threatened during the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew he and his daughter survived under Catherine and the duke of Guise's protection, he died in March the following year, his daughter inheriting his lands under the administration of his wife.
Early life and family Family Michel de l'Hôpital was born in 1506 in the town of Aigueperse, the son of the duchess of Lorraine's physician. His father also provided medical assistance to the Constable de Bourbon, whose treason in 1525 forced L'Hôpital and his family into an Italian exile. While in Italy, L'Hôpital received his doctorate in law. The family travelled with Bourbon to Spain and Italy in his travels before the Constable's death in 1527. After this the family moved to the court of Lorraine, where his father finished out his life in service to the duchess of Lorraine. Michel having studied law in Italy now studied also in France to further his education.
Daughter During the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, L'Hôpital's only daughter Magdelaine was caught up in the capital. Due to both her Protestantism and her father's religious policy in the proceeding decade she was at great risk of being killed. The Duke of Guise took her under his protection. She would marry Robert de Hurault, a robe noble. In 1555 the Cardinal of Lorraine became godfather to his recently born grandson.
Views L'Hôpital was one of several leading French figures who was interested in the philosophy of stoicism. To this end and beyond, L'Hôpital was a great advocate of learning Greek. L'Hôpital opined that there was no provincial or town governor in France who had not in their tenure committed enough graft with the king's money to be executable if the king willed it. He was frustrated by how infrequently the estates had met in the last century, viewing them as a valuable mechanism of receiving feedback on government policies. He was overall autocratic in disposition, arguing that the purpose of the estates was to provide their complaints and receive redress from the king, while the Parlement's were a vehicle through which the king delivered his justice.
Contemporary Opinion L'Hôpital's detractors characterised his religious policy as proof that he was a crypto-Protestant. Montaigne referred to both him and François Olivier as being "men extraordinarily sufficient, and endowed with no vulgar virtue [...] great Chancellor of France".
Reign of Francis I Marriage In 1532 he married the daughter of the lieutenant-criminel of the Châtelet, Marie Morin, receiving as part of the dowry his entrance to the Paris Parlement Now serving as a councillor in the Parlement, he was afforded valuable experience for his dealings with the body as chancellor. The Parlement would feel betrayed by his later attempts to curtail their power, due to him having once been one of their own.
Lèse majesté As a councillor, he took responsibility for drawing up the charges against the chief defenders of Boulogne (the seigneur de Vervins), who had surrendered the important port town to the English in 1544. Vervins was condemned to death. Marshal de Biez was likewise condemned but would not be killed, with others sent into exile or imprisoned.
In 1547 he was made French ambassador to the Council of Trent.
Reign of Henri II Anne d'Este In 1548 he was in Ferrara, where he assisted Anne d'Este in her renunciation of the Este inheritance that was a precondition for her marriage to the duke of Guise. He accompanied her on her journey back to France to meet her new husband.
During the 1550s, L'Hôpital served as chancellor to the duchess of Savoy, Marguerite, sister to Henri II. Marguerite was sympathetic to Protestantism, and allowed L'Hôpital to obtain a chair of jurisprudence for François Hotman, a virulent Protestant polemicist. In gratitude to the chancellor, Hotman dedicated his work Anti-Tribonian to L'Hôpital.
Lorraine In 1553 he entered the service of the Cardinal of Lorraine, serving them as a voracious polemicist and was rewarded by the family with the post of maître des requêtes for the hôtel du roi. He denounced those who characterised the house of Lorraine as 'foreigners', arguing that France rightfully extended to the Rhine. He called his benefactor, Lorraine, the 'hope of the French race'. He further praised the valour of François, Duke of Guise. The following year, Cheverny, future chancellor of France, purchased his councillor seat on the Paris Parlement.
Chambre des comptes He took up the position of president of the chambres des comptes in 1554, this granted him experience with the kingdoms financial administration, and also a place in the conseil privé. In 1558 in his capacity at the chambres des comptes he offered a panegyric at the wedding of the dauphin Francis II to Mary, Queen of Scots in which he boasted that the marriage would subdue England without the need for a war or violence.
While much of the French military aristocracy was disgusted by the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, which brought the Italian Wars to a close, L'Hôpital praised the treaty, writing a 'carmen de pax' in support of it. While an opponent of the war he had found it necessary to balance this with support for his patrons the Guise, as demonstrated in the poem he composed celebrating the duke of Guise's expedition into Italy in 1557. He wrote further poems in celebration of Guise's capture of Calais in 1558.
Reign of Francis II Finance With Cardinal Lorraine taking charge of the kingdoms finances on the death of Henri II, L'Hôpital served as his chief financial adviser. To salvage the kingdoms credit, he recommended to the Cardinal a radical program in which loans would be rescheduled, taxes raised and spending drastically cut. These policies were met with strong resistance in the provinces. In Normandie, a forced loan of 800,000 livres on the province went unpaid, even decades later the hardship induced by attempts to raise the funds was recalled by those in the province. Peasants fled their villages to avoid having to pay. The size of the army was slashed, but many soldiers were left in arrears over pay, and entered opposition to the regime.
Chancellor During the discord that convulsed the kingdom with the Conspiracy of Amboise in early 1560, L'Hôpital was absent from the kingdom, returning to the court in May 1560 before receiving confirmation as chancellor the month after on 30 June 1560 with the support of the Guise, Lorraine recommending him personally to the king for the post.
Assembly of notables
In May 1560, L'Hôpital oversaw the passing of the first religious edict that moderated persecution, the Edict of Romorantin. This edict had been formulated before his return to court. Upon presenting it to Parlement the body resisted its registration, and he was forced to push it through, regardless it would remain unimplemented, and he later afforded the body a backtrack as regards their authority over illegal assemblies. With the regime floundering in the aftershocks of Amboise, and with continued discord rocking the kingdom in the south, L'Hôpital was among those who pushed for the calling of an Assembly of Notables, to examine a potential package of financial and religious measures. Only through financial, judicial and religious reform could the kingdom be saved, in L'Hôpital's estimation. L'Hôpital opened the Assembly with a speech to the assembled grandees. In it he characterised the kingdom as a sick man, with the package of reforms to represent a cure to the ailments that destabilised and weakened the country.