Guillaume du Bellay

Guillaume du Bellay, seigneur de Langey (1491 – 9 January 1543), was a French diplomat and general from a notable Angevin family under King Francis I.

His father, Louis du Bellay-Langey was a younger son of the Angevin family of du Bellay, which from the 14th century was distinguished in the service of the dukes of Anjou and afterwards of the kings of France; and Louis had six sons, who were among the best servants of Francis I. Guillaume, the eldest, is one of the most remarkable figures of the time; a brave soldier, a humanist and a historian, he was above all the most able diplomat at the command of Francis I, prodigiously active, and excelling in secret negotiations.

[1] His missions to Spain, Italy, England and Germany were innumerable; sent three times to England in 1529–30, occupied with the execution of the treaty of Cambrai and also with the question of Henry VIII’s divorce, and with the help of his brother Jean, then bishop of Paris, he obtained a decision favourable to Henry VIII from the Sorbonne University on 2 July 1530.

[3] Guillaume du Bellay was the devoted protector of freedom of thought; without actually joining the reformers, he defended the innovators against their fanatical opponents.

He imitated Livy in his Ogdoades, a history of the rivalry between Francis I and the emperor from 1521, of which, though he had no time to finish it, important fragments remain, inserted by his brother Martin du Bellay (died 1559) in his Mémoires (1569).