During the seven years between 1555 and 1562, a transformation took place in the character of early French Protestantism. Before 1555 reformed communities in the kingdom of France were relatively scarce, and only loosely affiliated; by 1562 they had become more numerous, and more centralised. Before 1555 a typical congregation would meet, without either a minister or a system of ecclesiastical discipline, for prayers, the singing of hymns and bible-reading; by 1562, the same group would probably have not only its own pastor to preach and administer the sacraments, but also a consistory to enforce church discipline. In the most recent secondary literature this development is commonly described as the transformation of églises plantées into églises dressées. It is said, for example by Prestwich, that ‘the consistory became the mark of a true church, termed an église dressée, in contrast to the amorphous Bible gatherings, known as églises plantées’. The purpose of this brief article is to question whether these terms were ever contrasted in this way in the mid-sixteenth century, and to suggest that other phrases express the development more accurately.