Divine who knew the story that I have related published it to prove that the Catholicks were guilty of the Crime which the Calvinists were accused of When this story came to light there was a great alarme in the House of the Queen-Mother of the King of England that House being full of Jesuits and even that great Lord who had lead the Jesuits to Rome and had made himself chief of that Conspiracy was one of the principal Officers of the House They immediately demanded Justice of the King by the means of the Queen-Mother for the injury that he who had published this scandalous story had done them The Doctor offered to prove his Accusation and to produce his Witnesses who were still living The great Lord and Officer of the Queens House and the Jesuits seeing the resolution of this Man durst not push him on they only obtain'd from the King by the means of the Queen-Mother that he should be silenced You must avow that there are but few that are innocent who would have been so easie in so terrible an Accusation Besides it is certain that this Consultation of Rome has been seen by several persons If it is false it must have been forged by this Chaplain who was turned Catholick and who shewed it since tho it must be confessed that this is not very likely However as all this is reduceed to a single Witness my Gentleman acknowledged that the proof was not wholly in forme but he stood much upon the late Conspiracy of England which was discovered two years ago by which half the Kingdom was to have had their Throats cut to become Masters of the rest Prov. Be it as it will my Hugonot Gentleman concluded from all this that a Protestant Prince can never be assured of the Fidelity of his Catholick Subjects On the contrary said he the Protestants are subject to their Prince out of Conscience and out of a Principle of their Religion They acknowledge no other Superiour than their King and do not believe that for the cause of Heresie it is permitted either to kill a lawful Prince or to refuse him obedience They oppose against us said he to me the English and Holland Catholicks But what has been promised to those people that has not been performed The United Provinces of the Low Countries are entred into the Union with this Condition of not suffering any other Religion in their States than the Protestant Though England was reformed under Edward the 6 th afterwards under Elizabeth by several Acts of Parliament which are the fundamental Laws of the Kingdom it was ordered that no other Religion should be suffered than that the Anglicane Church made choice of and that they would not suffâ—r the Assemblies of those whom they at present call Nonconformists It was even forbidden to the Priests and Monks to set Foot in England and to make any abode there However they have not kept up to this rigour and every one knows that there is at present above ten thousand Priests and Monks disguised in England and that there has ever been so Wherefore more has been given to the Catholicks than was promised them But in France where we live under favourable Edicts they have promised us what they have not performed It is only against us that they make profession of not performing what they have promised The Edicts of Pacification are in all the Forms that perpetual Laws ought to be they are verified by the Parliaments they are confirmed by a hundred Declarations which followed by Consequence and by a thousand Royal Words In fine they have been laid as irrevocable Laws and as foundations of the Peace of the State We rely upon the good Faith of so many promises and on a sudden we see snatcht from us what we looked upon as our greatest security and which we had possessed for above a hundred years Thus there is neither Title nor Prescription nor Edicts nor Acts nor Declarations which can put us in Safety This is what he told me and I avow to you that this part put me in pain for I am a Slave to my Word and an Idolater of good Faith I look upon it as the only Rampart of Civil Society and I conceive that States and Publick persons are no lâ—ss obliged to keep what they promise than particular men Far. That is true But do not you know that the safety of the people and the publick good is the Soveraign Law Very often we must suffer and even do some Evil for the good of the State Peaces and Treaties are daily broken which have been solemnly sworn because that the publick interest requires it should be so Prov. My Hugonot made himself that difficulty and told me thereupon When War is declared against Neighbours to the prejudice of Treties of Peace and Alliances this is done in the Forms They publish Manifesto's they expose or at least they suppose Grievances and Infractions in the Articles of the Treaty that have been made by those against whom War is declared When a Soveraign revokes the Graces that he had done his Subjects it is ever under pretence that they have rendered themselves unworthy of them But are we accused or can we be accused of having tampered in any Conspiracy of having had Intelligence with the Enemies of the State of having wanted Love Fidelity and Obedience towards our Soveraigns If it be so let us be brought to Tryal let the Criminals be informed against and let the Innocent be distinguished from those that are Guilty We speak boldly thâ—rein because we are certain they can reproach us with nothing and we know that his Majesty himself has very often given Testimony of our Fidelity He knows that we did not enter into any of the Parties that have been made against his Service since he has been upon the Throne During the troubles of his minority it may be said that none but those Cities we were Masters of remained Loyal When the Gates of Orleans were shut upon the King he went to Gien and that City was going to be guilty of the same Crime without the vigour of a Hugonot who made way with his Sword in his hand to the Bridge and let it down himself This action was known and recompenced for the King immediately made him Noble who had done it We had not any part in the disturbances of Bordeaux in those of Britany and Auvergue nor in the Conspiracy of the Chevalier do Roban Not one Hugonot was engaged in these Criminal Cases The King has been pleased to acknowledge it and we look upon the Testimony of so great a King as a great Recompence But our Enemies who continually sollicit him to our ruin ought to be mindful that it would be more civil in them to leave the King the liberty of following his inclinations These would without doubt move him to preserve the effects of his kindness for people who have preserved for him an inviolable Fidelity This is what
to carry on this attempt under the Authority of the Prince they chose La Renaudie a Gentleman of Perigord That he contrived a meeting of a considerable number of Gentlemen and other Deputies at Nantes That after he had discovered to this Meeting what had been concluded at La Fertè he told them that the concealed Head of this Party was the Prince of Condè who had made him his Lieutenant That it was agreed that five hundred Gentlemen and a thousand Foot under thirty chosen Captains should upon the tenth of March meet from several Quarters at Blois at which time the Court was to be there and pretending to present a Petition to the King should secure his Apartment that they might effect their designs upon the Guises That the Guises having discovered this immediately removed the Court to Amboise That La Renaudie who was resolved to do that at Amboise which he could not now do at Blois was betrayed by one he trusted That by this means they apprehended most of his Associates without much trouble That they hanged a great many presently without the form of a Tryal That they cast some into the River That they hanged up the Body of La Renaudie who was slain and afterwards cut it into Quarters That the chief of his Captains were Beheaded after they had all confessed That three of their Captains who came last and had attacked the Castle were cut to pieces This was the end of that attempt After this general account Monsieur Maimbourg comes to the Prince in particular and this he says As to the Prince of Condè when the King reproached him for attempting against his Person and against the State he justified himself like a great Man and suitable to his high Courage for in presence of all the great ones at Court that were then by and before the King the Queens and Royal Family he gave the Lie to as many as should dare to say that he headed those that had attempted the King's Sacred Person or his State profering to lay aside the consideration of his being Prince of the Blood and maintain that Challenge in single Combate but no body took him up This he might do questionless with all Justice it being certain that he was resolved the first Article of the Consult at La Fertè should be That they should attempt nothing against the King's Majesty nor against the State Mezeray adds something here that is too remarkable to be passed by The Prince after he had profered To justifie his Innocence against his Accusers by Sword or Lance said That he assured himself he should make them confess that they themselves were the persons who had sworn the subversion of the State and Royal Family He had no sooner done speaking says this Popish Historian but the Duke of Guise seeming not to take it to himself addressed to him and told him That it was not to be endured so foul a Charge should be laid upon so great a Prince and offered to be his Second if there could be any so audacious as to maintain these false Accusations It appears by what Monsieur Maimbourg sets down and asserts That the design of that business of Amboise was only to seize the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorrain to bring them to their Tryal That it was resolved at the undertaking of this business That they would attempt nothing against the King the Royal Family or the State That indeed the Prince of Condè did not attempt any thing against the Kings Majesty or State in this business of Amboise When therefore Monsieur Maimbourg so shamefully contradicting himself dares say in another place That you shall hardly meet with a more desperate Conspiracy than that of the Huguenots against their King in the business of Amboise What can he pass for less in the sense of all honest men than an infamous Libeller Against the testimony of his own conscience against what himself had writ and avowed does he lay a heavy accusation upon the Innocent and all this in hopes to afflict the afflicted and to shut up the Bowels of their Brethren in Foreign Parts from taking compassion of the poor French Protestants who are so terribly persecuted in their own Countrey He would make all the World jealous of them that they might no where find reception but be reduced wherever they go to dye with Hunger and Affliction You see what a worthy Wight this Author proves that they make such a do about amongst Persons of Quality to prejudice them against their poor Brethren For we must not think that the argument he makes in his Recital to perswade us That to attack the Guises was to fall upon the King can excuse him from contradiction and calumny in this particular They are not groundless proofs that will justifie an accusation of this weight especially when it has been acknowledged that the persons accused designed neither against King nor State but only against the Guises There never was any thing says he so heinous as this Plot. For to seek to possess themselves of the King's Appartment to seize his principal Ministers and kill them before his face as Captain Mazeres who with others undertook the bloody execution attests Is it not to set upon the King himself and to seek to make themselves Masters of his Person and Government I shall not trouble my self to take off what he says of the Confession of Captain Mazeres Mezeray observes expresly in his Chronological Abridgment That the brave and wise Castelno when he was confronted sufficiently reproved this Captain and the famous Monsieur de Thou has the same passage in his History Monsieur Maimbourg himself acknowledges That the result of this meeting was not to kill the Guises but only to apprehend them that they might be brought to Tryal by the ordinary course of Justice These are the very words of their resolution as Mezeray reports them That whilst the King by reason of the tenderness of his years and the Artifices of those that had shut him up to themselves could neither foresee nor prevent the danger his Persâ—â— and Government were in they ought to seize upon the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal his Brother to bring them to Iustice before the States As to what Monsieur Maimbourg pretends that to endeavour to secure the Kings Appartment by force and in his presence to seize his principal Ministers is to seize the King himself and endeavour to become master of his Person and Government I say his pretence is unjust and very rash in regard of those extraordinary Circumstances France was then under 1. Francis the Second who then reigned was very young and Monsieur Maimbourg who calls him so often The little King Francis gives him no very advantageous Character 2. The Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorrain who were strangers having become masters of the Person and Government of this young Prince played
the matter he commends the Prince his generosity and said He was likewise ready to justifie his Innocence though privately he took care to have him apprehended In good earnest Monsieur Maimbourg's Morals must be strangely depraved since he is no longer a Jesuit not to find any fault in a Prince guilty of so prosligate a Dissimulation and notorious Treachery And does he think if Lewis the Fourteenth ever comes to open his eyes he will think himself obliged to those that would make such a Man pass for a truly Christian Hâ—ro who has done his utmost to disappoint him of the Crown by taking it from his Ancestors and endeavoring to cut off the Illustrious Race of the Bourbon's If an â—nglishman should Canonize Cromwell and place him among the Hero's Can you imagine he should be well received at Court or that the King should repose any great confidence in his Loyalty Monsieur Maimbourg must know that the Prince of Condè being what he was could not look upon this pretended Hero otherwise than as a Monster He was obliged by the duty of his Relation his Honor Loyalty and all that was becoming a Great Mind with all his might to set himself against those wicked Designs which he saw the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorrain had so plainly layed Would you have had him stood with his hands in his pockets when he discovered so great danger and suffer Strangers to ruine the State and take the Crown away from his Family with a high hand 7. These Usurpers had laid their business so well and were become so absolute Masters of the Person the Mind the Authority and the whole Power of the young King that it was impossible to carry any Address to the King unless by their means and to do any thing against them to bring them to Justice but as one may say in the Kings presence who was continually in their hands and by consequence to redress a mischief that so absolutely required a remedy without resolving upon some great and extraordinary attempt Either therefore the Prince of Condè must have done what he did or else have suffered the Throne to be usurped and the Royal Family sacrificed contrary to that duty he owed to France to his King to Himself and to his whole Race If Monsieur Maimbourg will have it that the Prince of Condè should have let the Guises go on his King ought to look upon him as his mortal Enemy If he believes he did his duty let him retract and be ashamed of those unadvised words That he would have taken the Kings Lodgings by force as Affairs then stood to seize in his presence upon his chief Ministers was to attack the King himself and to seek to make himself master of his Person and Government In the condition matters were then it was the only humane means left to rescue the young King from slavery to give a stop to the Outrages of a Forain domineering Power or rather Tyranny and to preserve the Crown to its right Heirs If God was not pleased in his All-wise providence to give so good success to the attempt as was hoped it failed not nevertheless of doing some good It gave a check to the wicked designs of the Guises and made them sensible that whil'st they had to do with men of that Courage they should not purchase the Kingdom at so cheap a rate as they thought for Besides I must not conceal it from you that the Protestants were not the only Men that Lifted themselves under the Prince of Condè for this important Service to their Country and to the Royal Family several Roman Catholicks shared with them in the glory of this Attempt The famous Mezeray has published it to all the World So that Monsieur Maimbourg is 〈◊〉 out when he would make it a quarrel upon Religion And much 〈◊〉 unjustly is he mistaken when he offers to say that at the business of Amboise The Huguenots entred into a horrible Conspiracy against their King I am satisfied says I to our Friend and I am confident every honest man that knows as much as you have told me of this matter will look upon this Jesuits Imputation with amazement and detestation Pray give me an account now of the business of Meaux The French Protestants repâ—yed he are no less innocent of Conspiracy against their King in the business of Meaux than they were in that of Amboise The testimony of the eminent Cardinal d'Ossat is an invincible Defence to them in this Affair and puts them beyond the reach of Calumny But I suppose you would be throughly informed of this matter I will do it in as few words as possibly I can And I will take the account partly from Monsieur Maimbourg himselff partly from two other Popish Historians who have much a greater esteem in the World than he it is the famous President de Thou and Mezeray We will take it from the beginning You have not forgot what I told you at our former Meeting when I gave you an account of the first War the Prince of Condè was forced to make for rescuing the King at the earnest intreaty of the Queen-mother then Regent I shall not need to take off a thousand odious Reflections which Monsieur Maimbourg lays upon the French Protestants in relation to this War They are either the faults of some private persons who having acted contrary to the principles of the Reformed Religion were disowned by all sincere Protestants or false Suggestions which the solemn Edict of Charles the Ninth in the Year 1563. has sufficiently confuted the King there owning as done for his Service all that the Prince of Condè and his Friends had done in this first taking up of Arms. This noted Edict Ordains That the Protestant Religion should be publickly exercised in several parts of the Kingdom which the Edict names it puts all the French Protestants under the protection of their King in what part of France soever they should make their abode it Wills That every one of them when they come home should be maintained and secured in their Goods Honors Estates Charges Offices c. The Prince and the Protestants observed the Articles of the Treaty of Peace most exactly Monsieur Maimbourg tells us himself That all the places which the Huguenots held submitted to the King Nay we English have occasion to complain of their too great exactness in this point For they were the hottest in taking Havre de Grace from us which we had possessed our selves of only to give them succor against their Persecutors All their great Souldiers came against us to the Siege of this Town The Prince of Condè lodged all the while in the Trenches All the French says Mezeray went thither in great fury especially the Huguenots But their Adversaries dealt not so with them they broke the Edict every where in a shamful and barbarous manner This Illustrious Queen
innocency under Lewis the Thirteenth SIR I Was no sooner come to our Friends Chamber and that we were sate down but we fell to our business I am very well satisfied says I to him in all that you have told me hitherto in behalf of the French Protestants and I am convinced That till the Reign of their King Lewis XIII they cannot justly charge them with any Plot or Rebellion against their Kings If at any time they have taken up Arms it was always to secure the Crown to their lawful Prinâ—es against the ambitious designs of the House of Guise and under the Authority of the first Princes of the Blood who had a natural Right to oppose the Usurpation these Strangers would have made who making an ill use of the Simplicity Minority and Weakness of the Kings Francis the Second Charles the Ninth and Henry the Third had taken the Scepter out of their hands or at least would have deprived their Rightful Successors of it had not the Protestants given Succour with their utmost Force the great Prince of Condè first and afterwards the King of Navarre Therefore to say the truth they armed only in their Kings Quarrel and especially to secure to France the Illustrious House of Bourbon which sits on that Throne at present After all it is clear That hitherto they cannot question their Loyalty or their Innocence but through the heart of Henry the Great by blasting his Memory and disgracing his Crown and all his Posterity But I must confess to you That I am to seek how well to defend them against the Reproaches for their several Insurrections under the Reign of Lewis the Thirteenth For in the Year 1615 they joined with the Prince of Conde against their King which had like to have set the whole Nation in a Flame In the Year 1620 they sided with the Queen-Mother who raised Forces against the King her Son In the Years 1621 and 1622 they gave the occasion by the Meeting they held at Rochel contrary to the King 's express Command of a most bloody War in which many of their Garisons were Besieged Taken and Sacked In the Year 1525 they carried away their King's Ships from Blavet they seized upon the Island of Oleron they had divers Battels Lastly in the Years 1627 and 1628 they gave fresh disturbances under the Command of the Duke of Rohan and Rochel Revolted from its Allegiance to that degree of obstinacy that nothing but the utmost extremity of Famine could make them open their Gates These several Insurrections which are continually objected against them gives occasion to their Enemies to cry them down at Court amongst the Nobility and indeed all over the Nation as a restless sort of people active and dangerous whose Religion inspires them with a Spirit of Sedition and Back-sliding pernicious to Monarchs and Monarchies Therefore pray Instruct me what I may answer in their Justification and Defence I know not says our Friend whether you are in jest or earnest but for my part I find nothing more easie than to satisfie any reasonable Persoâ— in this point 1. â—tis is a hundred and sixty Years since there have been Protestants in France For by the Confession of Monsieur Maimbourg himself the Reformation begun to be settled ever since the Year 1522. And all the World agrees That from this Year to the Death of Henry the Second who was killed with a Lance by Montgomery in the Year 1559 which was about 37 Years after the Protestants continued all along exactly Loyal anâ— in the deepest Veneration for their Kings Monsieur Maimbourg indeed disputes the thirty Years under the Reigns of Francis the Second Charles the Ninth and Henry the Third but I have confuted all his Calumnies in this particular and you have allowed the strength of my Arguments for clearing the Protestants during these three Reigns so that here are 67 Years of Allegiance and Loyalty Neither have they any thing to say against them upon this account for the one and twenty Years that Henry the Fourth Reigned or for the four first Years of Lewis the Thirteenth no more than for the 54 Years that passed between the Year 1629 at what time all the Wars about Religion ceased and this present time 1682 when they are persecuted with the utmost Rigour So that for a hundred and sixty Years that the Protestants have been in France there are but fourteen in which they have any thing to object against them that is from their uniting with the Prince of Condè in the Year 1615 to the general Peace concluded in the Month of Iuly 1629. And of these fourteen Years we must deduct seven which are the Years 1616 1617 1618 1619 1623 1624 and 1626. in which there were no Civil Wars Thus when all is cast up and due Deduction made allow the worst that can be there are but seven Years which they can reproach them with And suppose it true that the Protestants during these seven Years should have forgot themselves so far as to have come short of their duty towards their Sovereign is it just to infer from thence That the Principles they go by proceed from a Spirit of Sedition and Rebellion Is there any proportion between seven Years misbehaviour and uneasiness and above a hundred and fiâ—ty Years Duty and Loyalty such Duty and Loyalty as have undergone the greatest proofs And since they have testified twenty times more Zeal and Constancy for the service of their Kings than they have shewed Disobedience and Opposition to their Orders does not Reason and Justice plainly oblige us to conclude from thence That they are animated by a spirit of Loyalty and Obedience It must be confessed That their Loyalty which stood firm for more than fourscore Years was shaken to some degree for the space of seven Years But he that swounds away is not dead The Sun goes not out when it is â—clipsed And the Loyalty of the Protestants is so well recovered from its fainting Fit that it is more than half an Age that we find it resisting all manner of Provocations and ill usage without yielding in the least This long and constant perseverance of the Protestants in their duty is that we ought to have regard to if we would be just in taking the true Character of their Spirit and not the infirmity of a hasty and short-lived transport This ought to be enough to satisfie all reasonable Men and yet it is not all that can be said in behalf of these poor persecuted people 2. It is a great matter Sir that they can with no Justice impute those Insurrections you spake of to the whole Body of the French Protestants For First There was an infinite number of them not in the least concerned Secondly they that were the Ring-Leaders were only Protestants in Name but really men only of this World Ambitious or Covetous who only made use of Religion for a Mask to hide their wicked purposes and