314 THE HISTORY OE THE ORDER OF [book IV.

most necessarily would it follow that he wouldincur the ill-will of the said duke and all his con-federates, and what is most of all important, of theemperor himself, our benefactor and protector.And it would end, perhaps, that we should have todepose him with grievous scandal and danger,having universal disorder for sequence. For mypart, if this your election he effectuated, I beginfrom the moment to mourn over the proximatedownfall of our order, and protest I do not consentto it, and that such tumults and excesses are nofault of mine.” 1 This sufficed to upset the tables,and on voting, the choice fell on a distant person,according to the usual practice, and who wasnowise conscious of what was being done. SirClaudius de la Sengle, a French gentleman, then atRome, ambassador to the Pontificate, who, on hisarrival at Malta, gave audience to the envoy ofCharles V., offering the order Mehediah, which hehad just conquered in Africa, but which Dela Sengle refused as too hard to keep, andexpired unexpectedly about the middle of August,1557, and was succeeded on the twenty-first of thesame month by the Prior of St Gilles, called Parisot,from his father’s fief, but better known by his familyof Yalette, Sir John de Yalette, famous by the1 Bosio : par. ii., lib. xviii. 358.