the earth its Mother or that it purposed by making it self away into the ground to save the Plow-man his next years labour Thick it groweth and so perfectly void of weeds that no garden can be imagined to be kept cleaner by art than these fields are by nature Pasture ground it hath little and less meadow yet sufficient to nourish those few Cattel they have in it In all the way between Diepe and Pontois I saw but two flocks of Sheep and then not above forty in a flock Kine they have in some measure but not fat nor large without these there were no living for them The Noblest eat the flesh whiles the Farmer feeds on Butter and Cheese and that but sparingly But the miserable states of the Norman paissant we wiil deferre till another opportunity Swine also they have in pretty number and some Pullen in their backsides but of neither an excess The principal Rivers of it is Seine of which more hereafter and besides this I saw two rivulets Robee and Renelâ—e In matter of civil Government this Country is directed by the Court of Parliament established at Roven for matters Military it hath an Officer like the Lieutenants of our Shires in England the Governour they call him The present Governour Mounsieur Duc de Longueville to whom the charge of this province was committed by the present King Lewis the thirteenth Anno 1629. The Laws by which they are governed are the Civil or Imperial augmented by some customes of the French and others more particular which are the Norman One of the principallest is in matters of inheritance the French custom giving to all the Sons an equality in their estate which we in England call Gavel-kind The Norman dividing the estate into three parts and thereof allotting two unto the eldest brother and a third to be divided among the others A Law which the French account not just the younger brothers of England would think the contrary To conclude this general discourse of the Normans I dare say it is as happy a Country as most in Europe were it subject to the same Kings and governed by the same Laws which it gave unto England CHAP. II. Diepeâ— the Town strength and importance of it The policy of Henry the fourth not seconded by his Son The custom of the English Kings in placing Governours in their Forts The breaden God there and strength of their Religion Our passage from Diepe to Roven The Norman Inns Women and Manners The importunity of Servants in hosteries The saucy familiarity of the attendants Ad pileum vocare What it was amongst the Romans and jus pilearum in the Universities of England IVne the 30th at six of the clock in the morning we landed at Diepe one of the Haven Towns of Normandy seated on an arm of the Sea between two hils which imbrace it in the nature of a bag this secureth the Haven from the violence of the weather and is a great strength to the Town against the attempts of any forces which should assault it by Sea the Town lying within these Mountains a quarter of a mile up the channel The Town it self is not uncomely the streets large and well paved the houses of an indifferent height and built upright without any juttings out of one part over the other The Fortifications as they say for we were not permitted to see them are very good and modern without stones within earth On the top of the hill a Castle finely seated both to defend the Town and on occasions to command it The Garrison consisteth of sixty men in pay no more but when need requireth the Captain hath authority to arm the Inhabitants The present Governour is the Duke of Longueville who also is the Governour of the Province intrusted with both those charges by Lewis the thirteenth 1619. An action wherein he swarved somewhat from the ensample of his Father who never committed the military command of a Country which is the Office of a Governour and the custody of a Town of war or a Fortress unto one man The Duke of Biron might have as great a courtesie from that King as the most deserving of his subjects he had stuck close to him in all his adversities received many an honourable fear in his service and indeed was Fabius and Scipio both the sword and buckler of the French Empire In a word he might have said to this Henry what Silius in Tacitus did to Tiberius Suum militem in obsequio mansâ—sse cum alii ad sedetiones prolaberentur neque daraturum Tiberii imperium si iis quoque Legionibus cupido novandi fuisset yet when he became petitioner to the King for the Cittadel of Bourg seated on the confines of his Government of Burgogne the King denied it The reason was because Governours of Provinces which commanded in chief ought not to have the command of places and fortresses within their Government there was also another reason and more enforcing which was that the petitioner was suspected to hold intelligence with the Duke of Savoy whose Town it was The same Henry though he loved the Duke Espernon even to the envy of the Court yet even to him also used he the same caution Therefore when he had made him Governour of Xanictoigne and Angoulmois he put also into his hands the Towns of Mets and Boullogne places so remote from his seat of Government and so distant one from the other that they did rather distract his power than encrease it The Kings of England have been well and for a long time versed in this Maxime of State Let Kent be one of our ensamples and Hampshire the other In Kent at this time the Lieutenant or as the French would call him the Governour is the Earl of Montgomery yet is Dover Castle in the hands of the Duke of Buckingham and yet Quinborough in the custody of Sir Edward Hobby Of which the one commandeth the Sea and the other the Thames and the Medway In Hampshire the Lieutenant is the Earl of Southampton but the Government of the Town and Garrison of Portsmouth is intrusted to the Earl of Pembroke Neither is there any of the best Sconces or Block-houses on the shore side of the Country which is commanded by the Lieutenant But King Lewis now raigning in France minded not his Fathers actions when at the same time also he made his Confident M. Luines Governour of Picardy and of the Town and Cittadel of Amiens The time ensuing gave him an insight of that state-breach for when the Dukes of Espernon Vendosme Longueville Magenne and Nemours the Count of Soisons and others sided with the Queen Mother against the King the Duke of Longueville strengthened this Dieppe and had not peace suddenly followed would have made good maugre the Kings forces A town it is of great importance King Henry the fourth using it as his Asylum or City of Refuge when that League was hottest against him For had he been further distressed
mixture of colours that no art could have expressed it self more delectable If you have ever seen an exquisite Mosaical work you may best judge of the beauty of this Valley Add to this that the River Seine being now past Paris either to embrace that flourishing soyl or out of a wanton desire to play with it self hath divided it self into sundry lesser channels besides its several windings and turnings So that one may very justly and not irreligiously conceive it to be an Idaea or representation of the Garden of Eden the River so happily separating it self to water the ground This Valley is a very large circuit And as the Welch-men call Anglesea Mon Mam Gymry that is the Mother of Wales so may we call this the Mother of Paris for so abundantly doth it furnish that great and populous City that when the Dukes of Bary and Burgundie besieged it with 100000. men there being at that time three or 400000. Citizens and Souldiers within the wals neither the people within nor the enemy without found any want of provision It is called the Valley of Montmorencie from the Town and Castle of Montmorencie seated in it But this Town nameth not the Valley onely it giveth name also to the ancient family of the Dukes of Montmorencie the ancientest house of Christendom He stiled himself Lepremier Christien plus vicil Baron du' France and it is said that his Ancestors received the faith of Christ by the preaching of St. Denis the first Bishop of Paris Their principal houses are that of Chantilly and Ecqucan both seated in the Isle This last being given to this present Dukes Father by King Henry the fourth to whom it was confiscated by the condemnation of one of his Treasurers This house also and so I beleive it hath been observed to have yeilded to France more Constables Marshals Admirals and the like Officers of power and command than any three other in the whole Kingdom insomuch that I may say of it what Irenicus doth of the Count Palatines the names of the Countries onely changed Non alia Galliae est familia cui plus debent nobilitus The now Duke named Henry is at this present Admiral of France The most eminent place in all the Isle is Mont-Martyr eminent I mean by reason of its height though it hath also enough of antiquity to make it remarkable It is seated within a mile of Paris high upon a Mountain on which many of the faithful during the time that Gaule was heathenish were made Martyrs Hence the name though Paris was the place of apprehension and sentence yet was this Mountain commonly the Scaffold of execution It being the custom of the Ancients neither to put to death nor bury within the wals of their Cities Thus the Jews when they crucified our Saviour led him out of the City of Hierusalem unto Mount Calvary unto which St. Paul is thought to allude Hebr. 13. saying Let us therefore go forth to him c. Thus also doth St. Luke to omit other instances report of St. Stephen Acts 7. And they cast him out of the City and stoned him So in the State of Rome the Vestal Virgin having committed fornication was stifled in the Campus Sceleritatus and other Malefactors thrown down the Tarpeian rock both scituate without the Town So also had the Thessalians a place of execution from the praecipice of an hill which they called the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Corvi whence arose the Proverb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be hanged As they permitted not execution of Malefactors within their wals so neither would they suffer the best of their Citizens to be buried within them This was it which made Abraham to buy him a field wherein to bury his dead and thus we read in the seventh of Luke that the Widow of Naims Son was carried out to be buried This custom also we find among the Athenians Corinthians and other of the Graecians qui inagris suis saith Alexander ab Alexandro aut in fundo suburbano ceuinavito aut patrio solo corpora humari consuevere Amongst the Romans it was once the fashion to burn the bodies of their dead within their City This continued till the bringing in of the Laws of Athens commonly called the Laws of the twelve Tables one of which Laws runneth in these words In urbe ne sepelito neve drito After this prohibition their dead corps were first burned in Campus Martius and their Urnes covered in sundry places of the field The frequent Urnes or sepulchral stones digged up amongst us here in England are sufficient testimonies of this assertion Besides we may find in Appian that the chief reason why the rich men in Rome would not yeild to the Law called Lex Agrariae for that Law divided the Roman possessions equally among the people was because they thought it an irreligious thing that the Monuments of their fore-fathers should be sold to others The first that is registred to have been buried in the City was Trajane the Emperor Afterward it was granted as an honorary to such as had deserved well of the Republique And when the Christian Religion prevailed and Church-yards those dormitories of the Saints were consecrated the liberty of burying within the wals was to all equally granted On this ground it not being lawful to put to death or bury within the Town of Paris this Mountain was destinate to these purposes then was it onely a Mountain now it is enlarged unto a Town It hath a poor wall an Abbey of Benedictine Monks and a Chappel called La Chapelle des Martyrs both founded by Lewis the sixth called The Gross Amongst others which received here the Crown of Martyrdom none more famous than St. Denis said to be Dionisius Areopagita the first Bishop of Paris Rusticus his Arch-preist and Eleutherius his Deacon The time when under the raign of Domitian the person by whose command Hesubinus Governour of Paris the crime for not bowing before the Altar of Mercury and offering sacrifice unto him Of St. Denis being the Patron or Tutelary St. of France the Legend reports strange wonders as namely when the Executioner had smitten off his head he caught it between his arms and ran with it down the hill as fast as his legs could bear him Half a mile from the place of his execution he sate down rested and so he did nine times in all even till he came to the place where his Church is now built There he fell down and died being three milee English from Mount Martyr and there he was buried together with Rusticus and Eleutherius who not being able to go as fast as he did were brought after by the people O impudentiam admirabilem verè Romanam and yet so far was the succeeding age possessed with a beleif of this miracle that in the nine several places where he is said to have rested so many handsom crosses of stones there are erected all of a making To the
unto it self following no Rule written in their Sentences but judging according to equity and conscience In matters criminal of greater consequence the process is here immediately examined without any preparation of it from the inferiour Courts as at the araignment of the Duke of Biron and divers times also in matter personall But their power is most eminent in disposing the affaires of State and of the Kingdome for such prerogatives have the French Kings given hereunto that they can neither denounce Warre nor conclude Peace without the consent a formall one at the least of this Chamber An Alieniation of the least of the Lands of the Crown is not any whit valued unless confirmed by this Court neither are his Edicts in force till they are here verified nor his Letters Pattents for the creating of a Peere till they are here allowed of Most of these I confess are little more than matters of form the Kings power and pleasure being become boundless yet sufficient to shew the body of Authority which they once had and the shaddow of it which they still keep yet of late they have got into their disposing one priviledge belonging formerly to the Conventus Ordinum or the Assembly of the three Estates which is the conferring of the Regency or protection of their Kings during their minority That the Assembly of the three Estates formerly had this priviledge is evident by their stories Thus we find them to have made Queene Blanche Regent of the Realm during the non-age of her Son St. Lewiis Anno 1227. that they declared Phillip le Valois successor to the Crowne in case that the widdow of Charles de belle was not delivered of a Son Anno 1328. That they made Charles the Daulphin Regent of France during the imprisonment of King John his Father Anno 1357. As also Phillip of Burgony during the Lunary Charles the sixth Anno 1394 with divers others On the other side we have a late example of the power of the Parliament of Paris in this very case for the same day that Henry the fourth was slain by Raviliae the Parliament met and after a short consultation declared Mary de Medices Mother to the King Regent in France for the Government of the State during the minority of her Son with all power and authority such are the words of the Instrument dated the 14. of May 1610. It cannot be said but this Court deserveth not onely this but any other indulgence whereof any one member of the Common-wealth is capable So watchful are they over the health of the State and so tenderly do they take the least danger threatned to the liberties of that Kingdome that they may not unjustly be called Patres Patriae In the year 1614. they seazed upon a discourse written by Suarez a Jesuite entitled Adversus Anglicanae sectae errores wherein the Popes temporal power over Kings and Princes is averred which they sentenced to be burnt in the Pallace yard by the publick Hangman The yeare before they inflicted the same punishment upon a vain and blasplemous discourse penned by Gasper Niopins a fellow of a most desperate brain and a very incendiary Neither hath Bellarmine himself that great Atlas of the Roman Church escaped much better for writing a Book concerning the temporal power of his Holiness it had the ill luck to come into Paris where the Parliament finding it to thwart the Liberty and Royalty of the King and Country gave it over to the Hangman and he to the Fire Thus it is evident that the titles which the French writers gave it as the true Temple of the French justice the Buttresse of Equity the Guardian of the Rights of France and the like are abundantly deserved of it The next Chamber in esteem is the Tournelle which handleth all matters Criminal It is so called from Tourner which signifieth to change or alter because the Judges of the other several Chambers give sentence in this according to their several turnes The reason of which Institution is said to be least a continual custome of condemning should make the Judges less merciful and more prodigall of blood An order full of health and providence it was instituted by the above named Phillip le Belle at the same time when he made the Parliament sedentary at Paris and besides its particular and original employment it receiveth Appeals from and redresseth the errours of the Provost of Paris The other five Chambers are called des Enquests or Camerae Inquasitionum the first and ancientest of them was erected also by Phillip le Belle and afterwards divided into two by Charles the seventh Afterwards of Processes being greater than could be dispatched in these Courts there was added a third Francis the first established the fourth for the better raising of a sum of money which then he wanted every one of the new Counsellers paying right dearly for his place The fifth and last was founded in the year 1568. In each of these severall Chambers there be two Presidents and twenty Counsellers beside Advocates and Proctors ad placitum In the Tournelle which is the aggregation of all the other Courts there are supposed to be no fewer than two hundred Officers of all sorts which is no great number considering the many Causes there handled In the Tournelle the Iudges sit on matters of life and death in the Chambers of Enquests they examine onely civil Affairs of estate title debts and the like The Pleaders in these Courts are called Advocates and must be at the least Licentiats in the study of the Law At the Parliaments of Tholoza and Burdeaux they admit of none but Doctors now the form of admitting them is this In an open and frequent Court one of the agedest of the Long Robe presenteth the party which desireth admission to the Kings Atturney General saying with a loud voice Paisse a Cour recevoir N. N. Licencie or Docteur en droict civil a l'office d' Advocate This said the Kings Atturney biddeth him hold up his hand and saith to him in Latine Tu jurabis observare omnes Reges Consuetudines he answereth Iuro and departeth At the Chamber door of the Court whereof he is now sworne an Advocate he payeth two Crownes which is forthwith put into the common Treasury appointed for the relief of the distressed-Widdows of ruined Advocates and Proctors Hanc veniam petimusque damusque It may be their own cases and therefore it is paid willingly The highest preferment of which these Advocates are capable is that of Chauncellor an Office of great power and profit The present Chauncellor is named Mr. d' Allegre by birth of Chartres he hath no settled Court wherein to exercise his authority but hath in all the Courts of France the supream place whensoever he will vouchsafe to visit them He is also President of the Councill of Estate by his place and on him dependeth the making of good and sacred Lawes the administration of Justice the reformation of
man as he informed me able to discharge the trust reposed in him by his Master and one that very well affecteth the English Nation He hath the fairest Eglise and keepeth the largest retinue of any ordinary Embassadour in the Realm and maketh good his Masters supremacy by his own precedency To honour him against he was to take this charge his Holiness created him Bishop of Damiata in Egypt A place which I am certain never any of them saw but in a Map and for the profits he receiveth thence they will never be able to pay for his Crosier But this is one of his Holiness usual policies to satisfie his followers with empty titles So he made Bishop whom he sent to govern for him in England Bishop of Chalcedon in Asia and Smith also who is come over about the same business with the Queen Bishop of Archidala a City of Thrace An old English Doctor used it as an especial argument to prove the Universality of power in the Pope because he could ordain Bishops over all Cities in Christendom If he could as easily also give them the revenue this reason I confess would much sway me till then I am sorry that men should still be boyes and play with bubbles By the same authority he might do well to make all his Courtiers Kings and he were sure to have a most Royal and beggerly Court of it To proceed a little further in the Allegory so it is that when Jacob saw Esau to have incurred his Fathers and Mothers anger for his heathenish marriage he set himself to bereave his elder brother of his blessing prayers and the sweet smell of his Venison the sweet smelling of his sacrifices obtained of his Lord and Father a blessing for him for indeed the Lord hath given unto this his French Jacob as it is in the Text The dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth and plenty of corn and Wine Gen. 27. 5 28. It followeth in the 41. ver of the chapter And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his Father had blessed him and Esau said in his heart the dayes of mourning for my Father are at hand then will I slay my brother Jacob The event of which his bloudy resolution was that Jacob was fain to relinquish all that he had and fly unto his Vncle This last story expresseth very much of the estate of the French Church The Papists hated the Protestants to see them thrive and encrease so much amongst them this hatred moved them to a war by which they hoped to root them out all together and this war compelled the Protestants to abandon their good Towns and strong Holds and all their possessions and to fly unto their friends wheresoever they could find them And indeed the present estate of the Protestants is not much better than that of Jacob in Mesopotamia nor much different the blessing which they expect lyeth more in the seed than in the harvest and well may they hope to be restored to the love and bosome of their brethren of which as yet they have no assurance For their strength it consisteth principally in their prayers to God and secondly in their obedience to their King Within these two Fortresses if they can keep themselves they need fear none ill because they shall deserve none The onely outward strengths they have left them are the two Towns of Moutabon and Rochell the one deemed invincible the other threatned a speedy destruction The Duke of Espernon at my being there lay round about it and it was said that the Town was in very bad terms all the neighbouring Townes to whose opposition they most trusted having yeilded at the first sight of the Canon Rochell its thought cannot be forced by assaults nor compelled by a famine some Protestants are glad of it and hope to see the French Church restored to its former powerableness by the resistance of that Town meerly I rather think that the perverse and stubborn condition of it will at last drive the young King into a fury and incite him to revenge their contradiction on their innocent Friends now disarmed and disabled Then will they see at last the issue of their own peremptory resolutions and begin to beleive that the Heathen Historian was of the two the better Christian when he gave us this note Non turpe est ab eo vinci quem vincere esset nefas neque illi in honeste etiam summitti quem fortuna super omnes extulisset This weakness and misery which hath now befallen the Protestants was an effect I confess of the ill will which the other party bare them but that they bare them ill will was a fruit of their own grafting In this circumstance they were nothing like Jacob who in the hatred which his brother Esau had to him was meerly passive They being active also in the birth of it And indeed the lamentable and bloudy war which fell upon them they not onely endeavoured not to avoid but invited During the raign of Henry the fourth who would not see it and the troublesome minority of Lewis the thirteenth who could not molest them they had made themselves masters of ninety nine Towns well fortified and enabled for a siege A strength too great for any one faction to keep tother under a King which desires to be himself and so rule his people In the opinion of their potency they call Assemblies Parliaments as it were when and as often as they pleased There they consulted of the common affairs of Religion made new Laws of government removed and exchanged their general Officers the Kings leave all this while never so much as formally asked Had they onely been guilty of too much power that crime alone had been sufficient to have raised a war against them it not standing with the safety and honour of a King not to be the absolute commander of his own subjects But in this their licentious calling of Assemblies they abused their power into a neglect and in not dissolving them at his Majesties commandement they increased their neglect into a disobedience The Assembly which principally the war and their ruine was that of Rochell called by the Protestants presently upon the Kings journey into Bearne This general meeting the King prohibited by his especial Edicts declaring all them to be guilty of treason which notwithstanding they would not hearken to but very undutifully went on in their purposes It was said by a Gentleman of that party and one that had been employed in many of their affairs that the very zeal of some who had the guiding of their consciences had thrusted them into those desperate courses and I beleive him Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum Being assembled they sent the King a Remonstrance of their greivances to which the Duke Lesdiguiers in a letter to them written gives them a â—e y fair and plausible answer wherein also he entreateth them to obey the Kings Edict and
distinctly then the rest I cannot say more elegantly yet partly for this reason partly because of the study of the Law and partly because of the sweetnesse of the aire the Town is never without abundance of strangers of all Nations which are in correspondency with the French but in the greatest measure it is replenished with those of Germany who have here a Corporation indeed do make among themselves a better Vniversity then the Vniversity This Corporation consisteth of a Procurator a Questor an Assessor two Bibliothecaries and twelve Counsellors they have all of them their distinct jurisdictions and are solemnly elected by the rest of the company every third moneth The Consulship of Rome was never so welcome unto Cicero as the office of Procurator is to a Dutch Gentleman he for the time of his command ordering the affaires of all his Nation and to say truth being much respected by those of the Towne it is his office to admit of the young comers to receive the moneyes due at their admission and to receive an account of the dispending of it of the Questor and the expiring of his charge The office of an Assessor is like that of a Clerk of the Councell and the Secretary mixt fot he registreth the Acts of their Counsells writeth Letters in the name of the House to each of the French Kings at their new coming to the Crown and if any Prince or extraordinary Ambassadour cometh to the town he entertaineth him with a Speech The Bibliothecaries look to the Library in which they are bound to remain three houres a day in their severall tuâ—nes a pretty room it is very plentifully furnished with choyce books and that at small charge for that it is here the custome that every one of the Nation at his departure must leave with them one of what kinde or price it best pleaseth him besides each of the Officers at the resigning of his charge giveth unto the new Questor a piece of gold about the value of a Pistolet to be expended according as the necessities of their state require which most an end is bestowed upon the increase of their Library Next unto this Cite des Littres as one of the French writers calleth Paris is their Counsell-house an handsome squire Chamber and well furnished In this they hold their consultations and in this preserve their Records and Priviledges the keeping of the one and summoning the other being meerly in the hands of the Procurator About the Table they have five Chaires for the five principall Officers those of the Councell sitting round the Chamber on Stools the arms of the Empire being placed directly over every of the Seats If it happen that any of them dye there they all accompany him to his Grave in a manner mixt so orderly of Griefe and State that you would think the obsequies of some great Potentate were solemnizing and to say truth of them they are a hearty and loving Nation not to one another onely but to strangers and especially to us of England Onely I could wish that in their Speech and Complement they would not use the Latine tongue or else speak it more congruously You shall hardly finde a man amongst them which can make a shift to expresse himselfe in that language nor one amongst an hundred that can doe it Latinely Galleriam Compaginem Gardinum and the like are as usuall in their common discourse as to drinke at three of the clock and as familiar as their sleep Had they bent their study that way I perswade my self they would have been excellent good at the Common Lawes their tongues so naturally falling on these words which are necessary to a Declaration but amongst the rest I took especiall notice of one Mr. Gebour a man of that various mixture of words that you would have thought his tongue to have been a very Amsterdam of Languages Cras mane 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non irous ad magnam Galleriam was one of his remarkable speeches when we were at Paris but here at Orleans we had them of him thick and threefold If ever he should chance to dye in a strange place where his Countrey could not be knowne but by his tongue it could not possibly be but that more Nations would strive for him than ever did for Homer I had before read of the confusion of Babel in him I came acquainted with it yet this use might be made of him and his hotch-potch of Languages that a good Chymicall Physitian would make an excellent medicine of it against the stone In a word to goe no more upon the particulars I never knew a people that spake more words and lesse Latine Of these ingredients is the Vniversity of Orleans compounded if at least it be lawfull to call it an Vniversity as I thinke it be not the name of Academie would beseem it better and God grant as Zancho Panca said of his wife it be able to discharge that calling I know that these names are indifferently used but not properly for an Academie the name is derived from a place neer Athens called Academia where Plato first taught Philosophie in its strict and proper sense is such a study wherein one or two Arts are professed as Law at Orleans and Bononia and Physick at Montpelleir and Padua An Vniversity is so called quòd Vniversae ibi traduntur disciplinae as the name importeth where Learning is professed in the Generality and in the whole 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of it The first the Germans call Schola illustris the latter Generale studium very opposite titles and in which there is little of a German CHAP. IV. Orleans not an University till the coming of the Jesuits Their Colledge there by whom built The Jesuits not Singers Their laudable and exact Method of teaching Their Policy in it Received not without great difficulty into Paris Their houses in that University Their strictnesse unto the Rules of their order Much maliced by the other Priests and Friers Why not sent into England with the Queen And of what order they were that came with her Our returne to Paris THe difference between an Vniversity and an Academy standing thus those which lived in our Fathers dayes could hardly have called Orleans an Vniversity a Shoole of Law being the name most fit for it At this time since the coming of the Jesuits that appellation may not misbecome it they having brought with them those parts of Learning which before were wanting in it but that hath not been of any long standing their Colledge being yet not fully finished By an Inscription over the gate it seemeth to be the work of Mr. Cagliery one of the Advocates in the Parliament of Paris a man of large practise and by the consequence of greatâ— possessions and who having no child but this Colledge is said to intend the fastening of his estate upon it In this house doe those of this order apply themsevles to the study of good Letters in
Picardy by the River of Some and on the West it is bounded with the Ocean and the little River Crenon which severeth it from a corner of Britain It extendeth in length from the beginning of the 9th degree of longitude to the middle of the 23. viz. from the Cape of St. Saviour West to the Port town of St. Valeria East For breadth it lieth partly in the 49th partly in the 50th degree of latitude So that reckoning 60. miles to a degree we shall find it to contain 270. English miles in length and 60 English miles in breadth where it is narrowest Amongst the Nations it was accounted a part of Gallia Celtica the name Neustria This new title it got by receiving into it a new Nation A people that had so terribly spoiled the Maritine Coasts of England France and Belgia that a furore Normannorum was inserted into the Letany Originally they were of Norway their name importeth it Anno 800. or thereabouts they began first to be accounted one of the plagues of Europe 900. they seated themselves in France by permission of Charles the Balde and the valour of Rollo their Captain Before this they had made themselves Masters of Ireland though they long held it not and Anno 1067. they added to the glory of their name by the Conquest of England You would think them a people not onely born to the warrs but to victory But Vt frugum semina mutato solo degenerant sic illa genuina feritas eorum amaenitate mollita est Florus spake it of the Gaules removed into Asia it is appliable to the Norwegians transplanted into Gallia yet fell they not suddenly and at once into the want of courage which now possesseth them During the time they continued English they attempt the Kingdom of Naples and Antioch with a fortune answerable to their valour Being once oppressed by the French and inslaved under that Monarchy they grew presently Crest fall'n and at once lost both their spirits and their liberty The present Norman then is but the corruption of the ancient the heir of his name and perhaps his possessions but neither of his strength nor his manhood Bondage and a fruitful soil hath so emasculated them that it is lost labour to look for Normans in Normandy There remaineth almost nothing in them of their Progenitors but the remainders of two qualities and those also degenerated if not bastards a penurious pride and an ungoverned doggedness Neither of them become their fortune or their habit yet to those they are constant Finally view him in his rags and dejected countenance and you would swear it impossible that those snakes should be the descendents of those brave Heroes which so often triumphed over both Religions foyling the Saracens and vanquishing the Christians But perchance their courage is evaporated into wit and then the change made the better Ortelius would seem to perswade us to this conceit of them and well might do it if his words were Oracle Le Gens saith he speaking of this Nation sont de plus accorls subtills d' esprit de la Gaule A Character for which the French will little thank him who if he speak truth must in matter of descretion give precedency to their vassals But as Imbat a French Leader said of the Florentines in the fifth book of Guicciardine Non supena done consistesse lingeque tanto celebrare de Fiorâ—ntini so may I say of the Normans for my part I could never yet find where that great wit of theirs lay Certain it is that as the French in general are termed the King's asses so may these men peculiarly be called the Asses of the French or the veriest Asses of the rest For what with the unproportionable rents which they pay to their Lords on the one side and the immeasurable taxes laid upon them by the King on the other they are kept in such a perpetuated course of drudgery that there is no place for wit or wisdom left amongst them Liberty is the Mother and Nurse of those two qualities and therefore the Romans not unhappily expressed both the condition of a Free-man and a discreet and modest personage by this one word Ingenuous Why the French King should lay a greater burden upon the backs of this Nation than their fellows I cannot determine Perchance it is because they have been twice conquered by them once from King John and again from Henry the sixth and therefore undergo a double servitude It may be to abate their natural pride and stubbornness Likely also it is that being a revolting people and apt to an apostasie from their Allegiance they may by this meanes be kept impoverished and by consequence disabled from such practises This a French Gentleman of good understanding told me that it was generally conceited in France that the Normans would suddenly and unanimously betray their Country to the English were their King a Cathâ—like But there is a further cause yet of their beggarliness and poverty which is the litigiousness and frequent going to law as we call it Ortelius however he failed in the first part of the Character in the conclusion of it hath done them justice Mais en generall saith he its sont scavans an passible en prosses pluideries They are pretty well versed in the querks of the Law and have wit more than enough to wrangle In this they agree exactly well with the Inhabitants of our Country of Norfolke Ex infima plebe non pauci reperiuntur saith Mr. Cambden qui si nihil sit litium lites tamen ex ipsis jaris apicibus serere callent They are pretty fellows to find out quirks in Law and to it they will whatsoever it cost them Mr. Cambden spake not at random or by the guess for besides what my self observed in them at my being once among them in a Colledge-progress I have heard that there have been no less than 340. Nisi prius's tried there at one Assises The reason of this likeness between the two Nations I conjecture to be the resemblance of the site and the soyl both lie upon the Sea with a long and spacious coast both enjoy a Country champain little swell'd with hils and for the most part of a light and sandy mould To proceed to more particulars if there be any difference between the two Provinces it is onely this that the Country of Normandy is much better and the people of Norfolk are somewhat the richer For indeed the Country of Normandy is enriched with a fat and liking soil such a one quae demum votis respondet avari Agricolae which may satisfie the expectation of the Husbandman were it never so exorbitant In my life I never saw Corn-fields more large and lovely extended in an equal level almost as far as eye-reach The wheat for I saw little Barley of a fair length in the stalk and so heavy in the ear that it even bended double you would think the grain had a desire to kiss
consisteth of two Presidents twenty Counsellors or Assistants and as many Advocates as the Court will admit of The prime President is termed Mr. De Riz by birth a Norman upon the Bench and in all the places of his Court he taketh precedency of the Duke of Longueville When there is a Convention of the three estates summoned the Duke hath the priority We said even now that from the sentence of this Court there lay no appeal but this must be recanted and it is no shame to do it St. Austin hath writ his Retractions so also hath Bellarmine Once in the year there is an appeal admitted but for one man onely and that on this occasion There was a poysonous Dragon not far from Roven which had done much harm to the Country and City Many wayes had been tried to destroy him but none prospered At last Roman afterwards made a St. then Arch-bishop of the Town accompanied with a theif and a murderer whose lives had been forfeited to a sentence undertaketh the enter prise Upon sight of the Dragon the theif stole away the murderer goeth in and seeth that holy man vanquish the Serpent armed onely with a Stoale it is a neck habit sanctified by his holiness of Rome and made much after the fashion of a tippet with this Stoale tyed about the neck of the Dragon doth the murderer lead him prisoner to Roven To make short work the Name of God is praised the Bishop magnified the murderer pardoned and the Dragon burned This accident if the story be not Apocrypha is said to have hapned on Holy Thursday Audom or Owen successor unto St. Roman in memory of this marvellous act obtained of King Dagobert the first he began his raign Anno 632. that from that time forwards the Chapter of the Cathedral Church should on every Ascension day have the faculty of delivering any Malefactor whom the Laws had condemned This that King then granted and all the following Kings to this time have successively confirmed it I omit the ceremonies and solemnities wherewith this Prisoner is taken out of his Irons and restored to liberty It is not above nine years agone since a Baron of Gascoyne took occasion to kill his Wife which done he fled hither into Normandy and having first acquainted the Canons of Nostredame with his desire put himself to the sentence of the Court and was adjudged to the Wheele Ascension day immediately comming on the Canons challenged him and the Judge according to the custom caused him to be delivered But the Normans pleaded that the benefit of that priviledge belonged onely to the Natives of that Country and they pleaded with such fury that the Baron was again committed to prison till the Queen Mother had wooed the people pro eâ saltem vice to admit of his repreival I deferred to speak of the language of Normandy till I came hither because here it is best spoken It differeth from the Parisian and more elegant French almost as much as the English spoken in the North doth from that of London or Oxford Some of the old Norman words it still retaineth but not many It is much altered from what it was in the time of the Conqueror few of the words in which our Laws were written being known by them One of our company gave a Littletons tenures written in that language to a French Doctor in the Laws who protested that in three lines he could not understand three words of it The religion in this Town is indifferently poysed as it is also in most places of this Province The Protestants are thought to be as great a party as the other but far weaker the Duke of Longueville having disarmed them in the beginning of the last troubles CHAP. IV. Our journey between Roven and Pontoise the holy man of St. Claire and the Pilgrims thither My sore eyes Mante Pontoise Normandy justly taken from K. John The end of this Book IVly the second we took our farewell of Roven better accommodated than when we came thither yet not so well as I desired We are now preferred ab asinis ad equos from the Cart to the Waggon The French call it a Coach but that matters not so would they needs have the Cart to be Chariot These Waggons are ordinary instruments of travel in those Countries much of kin to a Graves-end Barge you shall hardly find them without a knave or a Giglot A man may be sure to be merry in them were he as certain of being wholesome This in which we travelled contained ten persons as all of them commonly do and amongst these ten one might have found English Scots French Normans Dutch and Italians a jolly medley had our religions been as different as our Nations I should have thought my self in Amsterdam or Poland If a man had desired to have seen a brief or an Epitome of the world he could no where have received such satisfaction as by looking on us I have already reckoned up the several nations I will now lay open the several conditions There were then to be found among these passengers Men and Women Lords and Serving-men Schollars and Clowns Ladies and Chamber-maids Priests and Lay-men Gentlemen and Artificers people of all sexes and almost of all ages If all the learning in the world were lost it might be found in Plutarch so said Budaeus If all the Nations in the world had been lost they might have been found again in our Waggon so I Seriously I think our Coach to have been no unfit representation of the Ark a whole world of men and languages might have grown out of it But all this while our Waggon joggeth on but so leasuresy that it gave me leave to take a more patient view of the Country then we could in the Cart. And here indeed I saw sufficient to affect the Country yea to dote on it had I not come out of England The fields such as already I have described every where beset with Apple-trees and fruits of the like nature you could scarce see any thing which was barren in the whole Country These Apples are both meat and drink to the poor Pesant for the Country is ill provided with vines the onely want I could observe in it and Beer is a good beverage at a Gentlemans table Sider then or Perry are the poor mans Clarret and happy man is he which can once or twice in a week aspire so high above water To proceed Through many a miserable Village Duburgs they call them and one Town somewhat bigger then the rest called Ecquille we came that night to St. Claire ten French miles from Roven A poor Town God wot and had nothing in it remarkable but an accident There dwelt a Monk grown into great opinion for his sanctity and one who had an especial hand on sore eyes yet his ability herein was not general none being capable of cure from him but pure Virgins I perswade my self France could not yeild him many
a little parcell and thus did the English Saxon being the most prevailing of the rest impose the name of English on all the people of the Heptarchy Et dedit imposito nomina prisca jugo And good reason the vanquished should submit themselves as well unto the appellation as the Lawes of the Victor The French then are possessors of some part of old Gallia and masters of the rest possessors not of their Cities onely but their conditions a double victory it seemeth they enjoyed over that people and took from them at once both their Qualities and their Countries Certainly whosoever will please to peruse the Commentaries of Caesar de Bello Gallice he will easily guess him an Historian and a Prophet He will rather make himself beleeve that he hath Prophicied the character of the present French then delivered one of the ancient Gaules And indeed it is a matter worthy both of wonder and observation that the old Gaules being in a manner all worn out should yet have most of their condition surviving in those men which now inhabit that Region being of so many several Countries and originals If we dive into Natural causes we have a speedy recourse unto the powerfull influence of the Heavens for as those celestial bodies considered in the general do work upon all sublunary bodies in the general by light influence and motion so have they a particular operation on particulars an operation there is wrought by them in a man as born at such and such a minute and again as born under such and such a climate the one derived from the setting of the houses and the Lord of the Horoscope at the time of his nativity the other from that Constellation which governeth as it were the Province of his birth and is the Genius or Deus tutelaris loci Hinc illa ab antiquo vitia saith an Author moderne rather in time than judgement et patriae sorte dur antia quae totas in historiis gentes aut commendant aut notant Two or three Authors by name of paralel will make it clear in the example though it appear not obscure in the search of causes Primus Gallorum impeâ—us major quà m virorum Secundus minor quam foeminarum saith Florus of the Gaules What else is that which Mr. Dallington saith of the French when he reporteth that they begin an action like thunder and end it in a smoak Their attempts on Naples and Millaine to omit their present enterprize on Genoa are manifest proofs of it Neither will I now speak of the battaile of Poâ—cctiers when they were so forward in the on-set and furious in the flight ut sunt Gallorum subita ingenia saith Caesar and I think these people are well known to be as hair-brain'd as the other ever were Juvenal calleth Galliam foecundum Causidicorum and amongst the modern French it is related that there are tryed more Law cases in one year than have been in England since the Conquest Of the ancient Germaines the next neighbours and confederates of the Gaules Tacitus hath given us this note Diem noctemque continaure potando nulli probrum and presently after de jungendis affinitatibus de bello denique et pace inconviviis consuttant Since the times of Tacitus hath Germany almost shifted all her old inhabitants and received new â—lonieâ— of Lombards Sueves Gothes Sclavonians Hunn's Saxons Vandals and divers other Nations unknown to that writer yet still is that exhorbitancie of drinking in fashion and to this day do the present Germaines consult of most of their affairs in their cups if the English have borrowed any thing of this humor it is not to be thought the vice of the Country but the times To go yet higher and further the Philosopher Anacharsis and he lived six hundred and odd years before Christ noted it in the Greeks that at the beginning of their feasts they used little goblets and greater towards the end when they were almost drunken 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Laertius reporteth it Sr. George Sandis in that excellent discourse of his own travells reporteth the same custome to continue still amongst them notwithstanding the length of time and all those changes of State and People which have since happened Their Empire indeed they have lost their Valour and all other Graces which set them out in the eye of the World and no marvail these were not National conditions but personall endowments I conclude this digression with the words of Barklay Haeret itaque in omnì gente vis quaedam inconcussa quae hominibus pro conditione terrarum in quibus nascâ— contigerit sua fata dimiserit The present French then is nothing but an old Gaule moulded into a new name as rash he is as head strong and as hair-brain'd A Nation whom you shall winne with a feather and loose with a straw upon the first sight of him you shall have him as familiar as your sleep or the necessity of breathing In one hours conference you may indear him to you in the second unbutton him the third pumps him dry of all his secrets and he gives them you as faithfully as if you were his Ghostly Father and bound to conceale them sub sigillo confessionis when you have learned this you may lay him aside for he is no longer serviceable If you have any humor in holding him in a further acquaintance a favour which he confesseth and I beleeve him he is unworthy of himself will make the first separation he hath said over his lesson now unto you and now must find out some body else to whom to repeate it Fare him well he iâ— a garment whom I would be loath to wear above two dayes together for in that time he will be thred bare Familiare est hominis omnia sibi remittere saith Velleius of all it holdeth most properly in this people He is very kind hearted to himself and thinketh himself as free from wants as he is full so much he hath in him the nature of a Chynois that he thinketh all men blind but himself In this private self conceitedness he hateth the Spaniard loveth not the English and contemneth the German himself is the onely Courtier and compleat Gentleman but it is his own glass which he seeth in Out of this conceit of his own excellencie and partly out of a shallowness of brain he is very lyable to exceptions the least distaste that can be draweth his sword and a minutes pause sheatheth it to your hand afterwards if you beat him into better manners he shall take it kindly and cry Serviteur In this one thing they are wonderfully like the Devil meekness or submission makes them insolent a little resistance putteth them to their heeles or makes them your Spaniels In a word for I have held him too long he is a waling vanitie in a new fashion I will give you now a taste of his Table which you shall find in a measure furnished I speak not of the
repair to have their audience and dispatch and hither were the Articles agreed upon in the National Synods of France sent to be confirmed and verified Here did the Subjects tender in their homages and oaths of fidelity to the King And here were the Appeals heard of all such as had complained against Comtes at that time the Governors and Judges in their several Counties Being furnished thus with the prime and choisest Nobles of the Land it grew into great estimation abroad in the world insomuch that the Kings of Sicily Cyprus Scotland Bohemia Portugal and Navarre have thought it no disparagement unto them to sit in it And which is more when Frederick the second had spent so much time in quarrels with Pope Innocent the fourth he submitted himself and the rightness of his cause to be examined by this Noble Court of Parliament At the first institution of this Court it had no settled place of residence being sometimes kept at Tholoza sometimes at Aix la Chapelle sometimes in other places according as the Kings pleasure and the case of the people did require During the time of its peregrination it was called Ambulatorie following for the most part the Kings Court as the lower Sphears do the motin of the Primum Mobile But Philip le Belle he began his raign An. 1280. being to take a journey into Flanders and to stay there a long space of time for the settling of his affairs in that Countrey took order that his Court of Parliament should stay behind him at Paris where ever since it hath continued Now began it to be called Sedentary or settled and also peu a pen by little and little to loose much of its lustre For the Cheif Princes and Nobles of the Kings retinue not able to live out of the air of the Court withdrew themselves from the troubles of it by which means it came at last to be appropriated to those of the long Robe as they term them both Bishops and Lawyers In the year 1463. the Prelates also were removed by the Command of Lewis the eleventh an utter enemy to the great ones of his Kingdom onely the Bishop of Paris and the Abbot of St. Denis being permitted their place in it Since which time the Professors of the Civil Law have had all the swaying in it cedeunt arma togae as Tully The place in which this Sedentary Court of Parliament is now kept is called the Palaâ—e being built by Philip le Belle and intended to be his Mansion or dwelling house He began it in the first year of his reign Viz. Anno 1286. and afterwards assigned a part of it to his Judges of the Parliament it being not totally and absolutely quitted unto them till the dayes of King Luwis the tenth In this the French Subjects are beholding to the English by whose good example they got the ease of a Sedentary Court Our Law Courts also removing with the King till the year 1224. when by a Statute in the Magna Charta it was appointed to be fixt and a part of the Kings Pallace in Westminster allotted for that purpose Within the Virge of this Pallace are contained the seven Chambers the Parliament That called le grand Chambre five Chambers of Inquisition or des Enquests and one other called la Tournelle There are moreover the Chambers des aides des accompts de l'ediect des Monnoyes and one called la Chambre Royal of all which we shall have occasion to speak in their proper places these not concerning the common Government of the People but onely the Kings Revenues Of these seven Chambers of Parliaments le grand Chambre is most famous and at the building of this House by Philip le belle was intended for the Kings bed It is no such beautiful place as the French make it that at Roven being farre beyond it although indeed it much excells the fairest room of Justice in Westminster So that it standeth in a middle rank between them and almost in the same proportion as Virgil between Homer and Ovid. Quantum Virgilius magno concessit Homero Tantum ego Virgilio Naso Poeta mâ—o It consisteth of seven Presidents Councellers the Kings Atturney and as many Advocates and Proctors as the Court will please to give admission to The Advocates have no settled studies within the Pallace but at the Barre but the Procureurs or Atturneys have their several Pewes in a great Hall which is without this Grand Chambre in such manner as I have before described at Roven A large building it is faire and high roofed not long since ruined by casualty of fire and not yet fully finished The names of the Presidents are 1. Mr. Verdun the first President or by way of excellencie le President being the secâ—nd man of the long Robe in France 2. Mr. Sequer lately dead and likely to have his Son succeed him as well in his Office as his Lands 3. Mr. Leiger 4. Mr. Dosammoi 5. Mr. Sevin 6. Mr. Baillure and 7. Mr. Maisme None of these neither Presidents nor Councellers can goe out of Paris when the Lawes are open without leave of the Court It was ordained so by Lewis the twelfth Anno 1499. and that with good judgement Sentences being given with greater awe and business managed with greater Majesty when the Bench is full and it seemeth indeed that they carry with them a great terrour For the Duke of Biron a man of as uncontrolled a spirit as any in France being called to answer for himself in this Court protested that those scarlet Robes did more amaze him than all the red Cassocks of Spain At the left hand of this Grand Chambre or golden Chamber as they call it is a Throne or Seate Royall reserved for the King when he shall please to come and see the administration of Justice amongst his people At common times it is naked and plain but when the King is expected it is clothed with blew purple Velvet semied with Flowers de lys On each side of it are two forms or benches where the Peers of both habits both Ecclesiastcal and Secular use to fit and accompany the King but this is little to the ease or benefit of the Subject and as little available to try the integrity of the Judges his presence being alwayes fore-known and so they accordingly prâ—pared Farre better then is it in the Court of the Grand Signeur where the Divano or Counsell of the Turkish Affaires holden by the Bassa's is hard by his bed Chamber which looketh into it The window which giveth him this enterveiwe is perpetually hidden with a curtaine on that side of the partition which is towards the Divano so that the Bassa's and other Judges cannot at any time tell that the Emperour is not listening to their Sentences An action in which nothing is Turkish or Mahometan The authority of this Court extendeth it self to all Causes within the Jurisdiction of it not being meerly Ecclesiastical It is a Law
break off the Assembly Upon the receit of this Letter those of the Assembly published a Declaration wherein they verified the meeting to be lawful and their purpose not to dismiss themselves till their desires were granted This affront done to the King made him gather together his forces yet at the Duke of Lesdiguiers request he allowed them twenty four dayes respite before his Armies should march towards them He offered them also very fair and reasonable conditions such almost as their Deputies had sollicited but far better than those which they were glad to accept when all their Towns were taken from them Profectâ— meluctabilis fatorum vis cujus fortunam mutare constituit ejus corrumpit consilia It holds very rightly in this people who turned a deaf ear to all good advise and were resolved it seemeth not to hear the voice of the charmer charmed he never so sweetly In their Assembly therefore they make Laws and Orders to regulate their disobedience as that no peace should be made without the consent of the general Convocation about paying of the Souldiers wages for the detaining of the Revenues of the King and the Clergy and the like They also have divided France into seven circles or parts assigning over every circle several Generals and Lieutenants and prescribed Orders how those Generals should proceed in the warr Thus we see the Kings Army levied upon no sleight grounds His regal authority was neglected his especial Edicts violated his gratious proffers slighted his revenues forbidden him and his Realm divided before his face and alotted unto Officers not of his own election Had the prosecution of his action been as fair as the cause was just and legal the Protestants onely had deserved the infamy But hinc illae lachrymae the King so behaved himself in it that he suffered the sword to walk at randome as if his main design had been not to correct his people but to ruine them I will instance onely in the tyrannical slaughter which he permitted at the taking of Nigrepelisse a Town of Queren where indeed the Souldiers shewed the very rigor of severity which either a barbarous Victor could inflict or a vanquished people suffer Nec ullum saevitiae genus omisit ira Victoria as Tacitus of the angred Romans For they spared neither man nor woman nor child all equally subject to the cruelty of the Sword and the Conqueror the streets paved with dead carcasses the channels running with the bloud of Christians no noise in the streets but of such as were welcoming death or suing for life The Churches which the Gothes spared in the sack of Rome were at this place made the Theaters of lust and bloud neither priviledge of Sanctuary nor fear of God in whose House they were qualifying their outrage Thus in the Common places At domus interior gemitu miseroque tumultu Miscetur Penitusque eavae clangoribus aedes Faeminiis ululant As Virgill in the ruine of Troy But the calamities which befel the men were merciful and sparing if compared with those which the women suffered when the Souldiers had made them the Subjects of their lust they made them after the subjects of their fury in that onely pittiful to that poor and distressed Sex that they did not let them survive their honours Such of them who out of fear and faintness had made but little resistance had the favour to be stabbed but those whose virtue and courage maintained their bodies valiantly from the rape of those villains had the secrets of Nature Procul hinc este cast ae misericordes aures filled with Gun-powder and so blown into ashes Whether O Ye Divine Powers is humanity fled when it is not to be found in Christians or where shall we find the effects of a pittiful nature when men are become so unnatural It is said that the King was ignorant of this barbarousness and offended at it Offended I perswade my self he could not but be unless he had totally put off himself and degenerated into a Tyger but for his ignorance I dare not conceive it to be any other than that of Nero an ignorance rather in his eye than in his understanding Subduxit oculos Nero saith Tacitus jussitque scelera non spectavit Though the Protestants deserved affliction for their disobedience yet this was an execution above the nature of a punishment a misery beyond the condition of the crime True it is and I shall never acquit them of it that in the time of their prosperity they had done the King many affronts and committed many acts of disobedience and insolency which justly occasioned the warr against them For besides those already recited they themselves first brake those Edicts the due execution whereof seemed to have been their onely petition The King by his Edict of Pacification had licensed the free exercise of both Religions and thereupon permitted the Priests and Jesuites to preach in the Towns of Caution being then in the hands of the Protestants On the other side the Protestants assembled at Loudan straitly commanded all their Governours Mayors and Sheriffs not to suffer any Jesuits or any of any other Order to preach in their Towns although licensed by the Bishop of the Diocess When upon dislike of their proceedings in that Assembly the King had declared their meetings to be unlawful and contrary to his peace and this Declaration was verified against them by the Parliament they notwithstanding would not separate themselves but stood still upon terms of capitulation and the justifiableness of their action Again whereas it happened that the Lord of Privas Town full of those of the Religion dyed in the year 1620. and left his Daughter and Heir in the bed and marriage of the Viscount of Cheylane a Catholike this new Lord according to law and right in his own Town changed the former Garrison putting his own servants and dependants in their places Upon this the Protestants of the Town and Country about it draw themselves in Troops surprize many of the Towns about it and at the last compelled the young Gentleman to fly from his inheritance an action which jumping even with the time of the Assembly at Rochell made the King more doubtful of their sincerity I could add to these divers others of their undutiful practises being the effects of too much felicity and of a fortune which they could not govern Atqui animus meminisse horret luctuque refuget These their insolencies and unruly acts of disobedience made the King and his Council suspect that their designs tended further than Religion and that their purpose might be to make themselves a free Estate after the example of Geneva and the Low Country-men The late power which they had taken of calling their own Synods and Convocations was a strong argument of their purpose so also was the intelligence which they held with those of their faith at the Synod at Sappe called by the permission of Henry the fourth on the first of
live happily if they can be content to live obediently that which is taken from them being matter of strength onely not priviledge Let us now look upon them in their Churches which we shall find as empty of magnificence as ceremony to talk amongst them of Common prayers were to fright them with a second coming of the Mass and to mention Prayers at the burial of the dead were to perswade them of a Purgatory Painted glass in a Church window is accounted for the flag and ensign of Antichrist and for Organs no question but they are deemed the Devils Bap pipes Shew them a Surplice and they cry out a rag of the Whore of Babylon yet a Sheet upon a Woman when she is in childâ—bed is a greater abomination than the other A strange people that could never think the Mass-book sufficiently reformed till they had taken away Prayers nor that their Churches could ever be handsome until they were ragged This foolish opposition of their first Reformers hath drawn the Protestants of these parts into a world of dislike and envy and been no small disadvantage to their side whereas the Church of England though it dissent as much from the Papists in point of doctrine is yet not uncharitably thought on by the moderatest Catholikes by reason it retained such an excellency of discipline When the Liturgie of our Church was translated into Latine by Doctor Mocket once Warden of All-Souls Colledge in Oxford it was with great approof and applause received here in France by those whom they call Catholikes Royal as marvelling to see such order and regular devotion in them whom they were taught to condemn for heretical An allowance which with some little help might have been raised higher from the practise of our Church to some points of our judgement And it is very worthy of our observation that which the Marquess of Rhosney spake of Canterbury when he came as extraordinary Embassadour from King Henry the fourth to welcome King James into England for upon the view of our solemn Service and Ceremonies he openly said unto his fellows that if the reformed Churches in France had kept the same orders amongst them which we have he was assured that there would have been many thousands more of Protestants than now there are But the Marquess of Rhosney was not the last that said so I have heard divers French Papists who were here at the Queens coming over and ventured so far upon an excommunication as to be present at our Church solemn Services extolling them and us for their sakes even almost unto Hyperboles So graciously is our temper entertained amongst them As are their Churches such is their discipline naked of all antiquity and almost as modern as the men which embraced it The power and calling of Bishops they abrogated with the Mass upon no other cause then that Geneva had done it As if that excellent man Mr. Calvin had been the Pythagoras of our age and his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his Ipse dixit had stood for Oracle The Hierarchi of Bishops thus cast out they have brought in their places Lay-Elders a kind of Monsters never heard of in the Scriptures or first times of the Gospel These men leap from the stall to the Bench and partly sleeping and partly stroaking their beard they enact Laws of government for the Church So that we may justly take up the complaint of the Satyrist saying Surgunt nobis e Sterquitineo magistratus nec dum tot is manibus publica tractant negotia yet to these very men composed equally of ignorance and a Trade are the most weighty matters of the Church committed In them is the power of ordaining Priests of conferring places of Charge and even of the severest censure of the Church Excommunication When any business which concerneth the good of the Congregation is befallen they must be called to counsel and you shall find them there as soon as ever they can put off their aprons Having blotted out there a little classical non-sense and passed their consents rather by nodding of their heads than any other sensible articulation they hasten to their Shops as Quinctius the Dictator in Florus did to his Plow Vt adopus relictum festinasse videatur Such a platform though it be as needeth no further confutation then to know it yet had it been the more tolerable if the Contrivers of it had not endeavoured to impose it on all the reformation by which meanes what troubles have been raised by the great Zealots here in England there is none so young but hath heard some tragical relations God be magnified and our late King praised by whom this weed hath been snatched up out of the garden of this our Israel As for their Ministery it is indeed very learned in their study and exceeding painful in their calling by the first they confute the ignorant of the Romish Clergy by the second their laziness And questionless it behoveth them so to be for living in a Country full of opposition they are forced to a necessity of book-learning to maintain the Cause and being continually as it were beset with spies did therefore frequent the Pulpits to hold up their credits The maintenance which is alotted them scarce amounteth to a competency though by that name they please to call it With receiving of tythes they never meddle and therefore in their Systematical Tractats of Divinity they do hardly allow of paying of them Some of them hold that they are Jewish and abrogated with the Law Others think them meerly to be Jure Humano and yet that they may be lawfully accepted where they are tendered It is well yet that there are some amongst theÌ„ which will commend grapes though they cannot reach them This Competency may come to forty or fifty pound yearly or a little more Beza that great and famous Preacher of Geneva had but eighty pound a year and about that rate was Peter du Moulins pension when he preached at Clarenton These stipends are partly paid by the King and partly raised by way of Collection So the Ministers of those Churches are much of the nature of the English Lecturers As for the Tythes they belong to the several Parish Priests in whose precincts they are due and those I warrant you according to the little learning which they have will hold them to be Jure Divino The Sermons of the French are very plain home-spun little in them of the Fathers and less of humane learning it being concluded in the Synode of Sappe that onely the Scriptures should be used in their Pulpits they consist much of exhortation and use and of nothing in a manner which concerneth knowledge A ready way to raise up and edifie the will and affections but withall to starve the understanding For the education of them being Children they have private Schools when they are better grown they may have free recourse unto any of the French Academies besides the new Vniversity of Saumus which
is wholly theirs and is the cheif place of their study CHAP. XIII The connexion between the Church and Common-wealth in general A transition to the particulars of France The Government there meerly Regal A mixt form of Government most commendable The Kings Patents for Offices Monopolies above the censure of the Parliament The strange Office intended by Mr. Luines The Kings gifts and expences The Chamber of Accompts France divided into three sorts of people The Conventus Ordinum nothing but a Title The inequality between the NoNobles and Commons in France The Kings power how much respected by the Princes The powerableness of that rank The form of Execution done on them The muititude and confusion of Nobility King James defended A Censure of the French Heralds The power and command of the French Nobles and their Tennants their baillages giblets and other Regalia Why they conspire with the King to undo the Commons HAving thus spoken of the Church I must now treat a little of the Common-wealth Religion is as the soul of a State policy as the body we can hardly discourse of the one without a relation to the other if we do We commit a wilful murder in the destroying a Republick The Common-wealth without the Church is but a Carcass or thing inanimate The Church without the Common-wealth is as it were anima separata The joyning of them together maketh of both one flourishing and permanent body and therefore as they are in nature so in my relations Connubio jungam stabili Moreover such a secret simpathy there is between them such a necessary dependency of one upon the other that we may say of them what Tullie doth of two Twinns in his book de Fato Eorum morbus eodem tempore gravescit eodem levatur They grow sick and well at the same time and commonly run out of their race at the same instant There is besides the general respects each to other a more particular bond betwixt them here in France which is a likeness and resemblance in the Church of France We have found a Head and a Body This Body again divided into two parts the Catholike and Protestant The Head is in his own opinion and the minds of many others of a power unlimited yet the Catholike party hath strongly curbed it And of the two parts of the body we see the Papists flourishing and in triumph whilst that of the Protestants is in misery and affliction Thus it is also in the Body Politick the King in his own Conceit boundless and omnipotent is yet affronted by his Nobles which Nobles enjoy all freedom of riches and happiness the poor Pesants in the mean time living in drudgery and bondage For the government of the King is meerly Regall or to give it the right name Despotical Though the Country be his Wife and all the people are his Children yet doth he neither govern as a Husband or a Father He accounteth of them all as of his servants and therefore commandeth them as a Master In his Edicts which he over-frequently sendeth about he never mentioned the good will of his Subjects nor the approbation of his Council but concludeth all of them in this form Cartel est nostre plaisir sic volo sic jubeo A form of government very prone to degenerate into Tyranny if the Princes had not oftentimes strength and will to make resistance But this not the vice of the entire and Soveraign Monarchy alone which the Greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the other two good forms of regiment being subject also to the same frailty Thus in the reading of Histories have we observed an Aristocracie to have been frequently corrupted into an Oligarchie and Politeia or Common-wealth properly so called into a Democracie For as in the body natural the purest Complexions are less lasting and easily broken and subject to alteration So it is in the body Civil The pure and unmixt forms of government though perfect absolute in their kinds are of little continuance and very subject to change into its opposite They therefore which have written of Republicks do most applaud and commend the mixt manner of Rule which is equally compounded of the Kingdom and Politeia because in them Kings have all the power belonging to their title without prejudice to the property In these there is reserved to the King absolute Majesty to the Nobles convenient authority to the people an incorrupted liberty all in a just and equal proportion Every one of these is like the Empire of Rome as it was moderated by Nerva Qui res olim dissociabiles miscuerat principatum libertatem wherein the soveraignty of one endamaged not the freedom of all A rare mixture of government And such is the Kingdom of England A Kingdom of a perfect and happy composition wherein the King hath his full prerogative the Nobles all due respects and the People amongst other blessings perfect in this that they are masters of their own purses and have a strong hand in the making of their own Lawes On the other side in the Regal government of France the Subject frameth his life meerly as the Kings variable Edicts shall please to enjoyn him is banisht of his money as the Kings task-masters think fit and suffereth many other oppressions which in their proper place shall be specified This Aristotle in the third book of his Politicks calleth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the command of a Master and defineth it to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Such an Empire by which a Prince may command and do whatsoever shall seem good in his own eyes one of the Prerogatives Royall of the French Kings For though the Court of Parliament doth seem to challenge a perusal of his Edicts before they pass for Laws yet is this but a meer formality It is the Cartell est nostre plaisir which maketh them currant which it seemeth these Princes learned of the Roman Emperours Justinian in the book of Institutions maketh five parts of the Civil Lawes Viz. He meaneth the Law of the twelve Tables Plebiscita Senatus consulta Prudentum responsa and Principum placita To this last he addeth this general strength Quod principi placuerit legis habet valorem The very foundation of the Kings powerfulness True it is yet that the Courts of Parliament do use to demurre sometimes upon his Patents and Decrees and to petition him for a Reversal of them but his answer commonly is Stat pro ratione Voluntas He knoweth his own power and granteth Letters Patents for new Offices and Monopolies abundantly If a moneyed man can make a friend in Court he may have an Office found for him of six pence upon every Sword made in France a liure upon the selling of every head of Cattel a brace of soles for every pair of boots and the like It is the onely study of some men to find out such devices of enriching themselves and undoing the people The Patent for Mines
raise and enhaunce up their rents to tax his Subjects on occasion and to prohibite them such pleasures as they think fit to be reserved for themselves In Grettanl in Picardie I saw a post fastened in the ground like a race-post with us and thereon an inscription I made presently to it as hoping to have heard news of sōe memorable battel there fought but when I came at it I found it to be nothing but a declaration of the Prince of Condes pleasure that no man should hunt in those quarters Afterward I observed them to be very frequent But not to wander through all particulars I will in some few of them onely give instance of their power here The first is Droict de Balliage power to keep Assizes or to have under them a Baillie and an Imperial seat of justice for the definition of such causes as fall under the compass of ordinary jurisdiction In this Court there is notice taken of treason robberies murthers protections pardons fairs markets and other matters of priviledge Next they have a Court of ordinary jurisdiction and therein a Judge whom they call Le Guarde de Justice for the decision of smaller business as debts trespass breach of the Kings peace and the like In this the purse is onely emptied the other extendeth to the taking away of the life for which every one that hath Hante Justice annexed to his feife hath also his particular Gibbet Nay which is wonderful methodical by the Criticisme of the Gibbet you may judge at the quality of him that owneth it for the Gibbet of one of the Noblesse hath but two pillars that of the Chastellan three the Barons four the Earls six the Dukes eight and yet this difference is rather precise than general The last of their jura Regalia which I will here speak of is the Command they have upon the people to follow them unto the warrs a Command not so advantagious to the Lord as dangerous to the Kingdom Thus live the French Princes thus the Noblesse thus those Sheep which God and the Laws hath brought under them they do not shear but fleece them and which is worse than this having themselves taken away the wooll they give up the naked carcass to the King Tonderi oves meas volo non deglubi was accounted one of the golden sayings of Tiberius but it is not currant here in France Here the Lord and the King though otherwise at odds amongst themselves be sure to agree in this the undoing and oppressing of the Paisant Ephraim against Manasseh and Masnasseh against Ephraim but both against Juda saith the Scripture The reason why they thus desire the poverty of the Commons is as they pretend the safety of the State and their own particulars Were the people once warmed with the feeling of ease and their own riches they would be presently hearkening after the Warrs And if no employment were offered abroad they would make some at home Histories and experience hath taught us enough of this humour in this kind it being impossible for this hot-headed and hare-brain'd people not to be doing Si extraneus deest domi hostem quaerunt as Justin hath observed of the ancient Spaniards A pretty quality and for which they have often smarted CHAP. XIV The base and low estate of the French Paisant The misery of them under their Lords The bed of Procrustes The suppressing of the Subject prejudicial to a State The Wisdom of King Henry the seventh The French forces all in the Cavillery The cruel Impositions laid upon the people by the King No Demain in France Why the trial by twelve men can be used onely in England The gabel of Salt The Popes licence for wenching The gabel by whom refused and why the Gascoines impatient of taxes The Taille and Taylon The Pancarte or aids the vain resistance of those of Paris The Court of aids The manner of gathering the Kings moneys The Kings Revenue The corruption of the French Publicans King Lewis why called the Just The moneys currant in France The gold of Spain more Catholike than the King The happiness of English Subjects BY that which hath been spoken already of the Nobless we may partly guess at the low estate of the Paisant or Country man of whom we will not now speak as Subjects to their Lords and how farre they are under their commandment but how miserable and wretched they are in their apparel and their houses For their apparel it is well if they can allow themselves Canvas or an outside of that nature As for Cloath it is above their purse equally and their ambition if they can aspire unto Fustian they are as happy as their wishes and he that is so arrayed will not spare to aim at the best place in the Parish even unto that of Church-Warden When they go to Plow or to the Church they have shooes and stockings at other times they make bold with Nature and wear their skins Hats they will not want though their bellies pinch for it and that you may be sure they have them they will alwayes keep them on their heads The most impudent custom of a beggarly fortune that ever I met with and which already hath had my blessing As for the Women they know in what degree Nature hath created them and therefore dare not be so fine as their Husbands some of them never had above one pair of stockings in all their lives which they wear every day for indeed they are very durable the goodness of their faces tels us that they have no need of a band therefore they use none And as concerning petticoats so it is that all have such a garment but most of them so short that you would imagine them to be cut off at the placket When the parents have sufficiently worn these vestures and that commonly is till the rottenness of them will save the labour of undressing they are a new cut out and fittted to the Children Search into their houses and you shall find them very wretched and destitute as well of furniture as provision No butter salted up against Winter no poudering tub no pullein in the rick barten no flesh in the pot or at the spit and which is worse no money to buy them The description of the poor aged couple Philemon and Baucis in the eigth book of the Metamorphosis is a perfect character of the French Paisant in his house-keeping though I cannot affirm that if Jupiter and Mercury did come amongst them they should have so hearty an entertainment for thus Ovid marshelleth the dishes Ponitur hic bicolor sincerae bacca Minervae Intubaque radix lactis Massa coacti Ovaque non acri leviter versata favellâ Prunaque in patulis redolentia mala canistris Hic nux hic mixta est rugosis carica palmis Et de purpurers collectae vitibus uvae Omnia fictilibus nitede They on the Table set Minerva's fruit The double coulour'd Olive
Law to be profest therein Wernir being the first Professor upon whose advice the said Emperour ordained that Bononia should be Legum Juris Schola una sola and here was the first time and place of that study in the Westerne Empire But it was not the fate onely of the Civill Lawes to be thus neglected all other parts of Learning both Arts and Languages were in the same desperate Estates The Poets exclamation O coelum insipiens infacetum never being so appliable as in those times for it is with the knowledge of good Letters as it is in the effects of Nature they have their times of growth alike of perfection and of death like the Sea it hath its ebbs as well as its flouds and like the Earth it hath its Winter wherein the seeds of it are deaded and bound up as well as a Spring wherein it re-flourisheth Thus the learning of the Greeks lay forgotten and lost in Europe for 700 yeares even unto Emanuel Chrysolarus taught it at Venice being driven out of his owne Countrey by the Turks Thus the Philosophy of Aristotle lay hidden in the moath of dust and Libraries Et nominabatur potiùs quam legebatur as Ludovicus Vives observeth in his notes S. Austin untill the time of Alexander Aphrodiseus Thus also lay the elegancies of the Roman tongue obscure till that Erasmus Moor and Reuclyn in the several kingdomes of Germany England and France endeavoured the restauration of it But to return to the Civill Law after the foundation of the Vniversity of Bologne it pleased Philip le Belle King of France to found another here at Orleans for the same purpose Anno 1â—12 which was the first school of that profession on this side the mountaines this is evident by the Bull of Clement the fifth dated at Lyons in the yeare 1367. where he giveth this title Fructiferum Vniversitatis Aurelianum sis inter caetera Citramontana studia prius solennius antiquius tam Civilis quam Canonicae facultatis studium At the first there were instituted eight Professors now they are reduced unto four onely the reason of this decrease being the increase of Vniversities the place in which they read their Lectures is called Les grands Escoles and that part of the City La Vniversitie neither of which attributes it can any way merit Colledges they have none either to lodge the Students or to entertaine the Professors the former sojourning in divers places of the Town these last in their severall houses As for their places of reading which they call Les grands Escoles it is onely an old Barne converted into a School by the addition of five rankes of Formes and a Pew in the middle you never saw any thing so mock its own name Lucus not being of more people called so à non lucendo then this ruinous house is the great School because it is little The present Professors are Mr. Fowrner the Rector at my being there Mr. Tullerie and Mr. Grand the fourth of them named Mr. Angram was newly dead and his place like a dead pay among Soldiers not supplied In which estate was the function also of Mr. Podes whose office it was to read the book of Institutions unto such as come newly to the town They read each of them an houre in their turnes every morning in the week unlesse Holy-dayes and Thursdayes their hearers taking their Lectures of them in their tables Their principall office is that of the Rector which every three moneths descendeth down unto the next so that once in a yeare every one of those Professors hath his turne of being Rector The next in dignity unto him is the Chancellor whose office is during life and in whose names all degrees are given and of the Letters Authenticall as they terme them granted The present Chancellor is named Mr. Bouchier Doctor of Divinity and of both the Lawes and Prebend also of the Church of S. Croix his place is in the gift of the Bishop of Orleans and so are the Chancellors places in all France at the bestowing of the Diocesan anciently it was thus also with us of Oxford the Bishop of Lincolne nominating unto us our Chancellors till the yeare 1370. William of Renmington being the first Chancellor elected by the Vniversity In the bestowing of their degrees here they are very liberall and deny no man that is able to pay his fees Legem ponere is with them more powerfull than Legem dicere and he that hath but his gold ready shall have a sooner dispatch than the best Scholar upon the ticket Ipsè licet venias Musis comitatus Homere Si nihil attuleris ibis Homere for as It is the Money that disputeth best with them Money makes the man saith the Greek and English proverb That of one of the Popes I remember not suddenly his name who openly protested that he would give the orders of Priesthood to an Asse should the King of England commend an Asse unto him may be most appositely spoken of them The exercise which is to be performed before the degree taken is very little and as trivially performed When you have chosen the Law which you mean to defend they will conduct you into an old ruinous chamber they call it their Library for my part I should have thought it to have been the Ware-house of some second hand Bookseller those few books which were there were as old as Printing and could hardly make amongst them one cover to resist the violence of a Rat. They stood not up endlong but lay one upon the other and were joyned together with Cobwebs instead of strings he that would ever gesse them to have been looked into since the long reigne of Ignorance might justly have condemned his own charity For my part I was prone to believe that the three last centuries of yeeres had never seen the inside of them or that the poor pâ—per had been troubled with the disease called Noli me tangere In this unlucky room doe they hold their disputations unlesse they be solemn and full of expectation and after two or three arguments urged commend the sufficiency of the Respondent and pronounce him worthy of his degrees That done they cause his Authenticall Letters to be sealed and in them they tell the Reader with what diligence and paines they sifted the Candidate that it is necessary to the Common-wealth of Learning that Industry should be honoured and that on that ground they have thought it fitting Post angustias solamen post vigilias requietem post dolores gaudia for so as I remember goeth the forme to recompence the labours of N. N. with the degree of Doctor or Licentiate with a great deale more of the like formall foolery Et ad hunc modum fiunt Doctores From the Study of the Law proceed we unto that of the Language which is said to be better spoken here then in any part of France and certainly the people hereof spake it more
superfluous and abrogation of unprofitable Edicts c. He hath the keeping of the Kings geeat Seal and by vertue of that either passeth or putteth back such Letters Pattents and Writs as are exhibited to him He hath under him immediately for the better dispatch of his Affairs four Masters of the Requests and their Courts Their Office and manner of proceeding is the same which they also use in England in the persons there is thus much difference that in Franee two of them must be perpetually of the Clergy One of their Courts is very ancient and hath in it two Presidents which are two of the Masters and fourteen Counsellers The other is of a later erection as being founded Anno 1580. and in that the two other of the Masters and eight Councellers give sentence Thus have I taken a veiw of the several Chambers of the Parliament of Paris and of their particular Jurisdictions as far as my information could conduct me One thing I noted further and in my mind the fairest ornament of the Pallace which is the neatness and decency of the Lawyers in their apparrel for besides the fashion of their habit which is I assure you exceeding pleasant and comely themselves by their own care and love to handsomeness adde great lustre to their garments and more to their persons Richly drest they are and well may be so as being the ablest most powerfull men under the Princes la Noblesse in all the Country An happiness as I conjecture rather of the calling than of the men It hath been the fate and destiny of the Law to strengthen enable its professors beyond any other any Art or Science the Pleaders in all Common-wealths both for sway amongst the people and vague amongst the Military men having alwaies had the preheminence Of this rank were Pericles Phochion Alcibiades and Demosthenes amongst the Athenians Antonius Mar. Cato Caesar and Tullie amongst the Romans men equally famous for Oratory and the Sword yet this I can confidently say that the several States above mentioned were more indebted unto Tullie and Demosthenes being both meer Gown men than to the best of their Captaines the one freeing Athens from the Armies of Macedon the other delivering Rome from the conspiracy of Catiline O fortunatum natam me Consule Romam It is not then the fate of France only nor of England to see so much power in the hand of the Lawyers and the case being general me thinks the envy should be the less and less it is indeed with them than with us The English Clergy though otherwise the most accomplisht in the World in this folly deserveth no Apologie being so strangely ill affected to the Pleaders of this Nation that I fear it may be said of some of them Quod invidiam non ad causam sed personam et ad valantatem dirigant A weakness not more unworthy of them than prejudicial to them for fostering between both Gownes such an unnecessary emulation they do but exasperate that power which they cannot controle and betray themselves to much envy and discontentedness A disease whose care is more in my wishes than in my hopes CHAP. IX The Kings Pallace of the Louure by whom built the unsutableness of it The fine Gallery of the Queene Mother The long Gallery of Henry the fourth his magnanimous intent to have built it into a Quadrangle Henry the fourth a great builder his infinite project upon the Mediterranean and the Ocean Lasalle des Antiques The French not studious of Antiquities Burbon House The Tuilleries c. WE have discharged the King of one Pallace and must follow him to the other where we shall find his residence It is seated in the west side of the Town or Ville of Paris hard by Porte neufue and also by the new Bridge An House of great fame and which the Kings of France have long kept their Courts in It was first built by Phillip Augustus anno 1214. and by him intended for a Castle it then serving to imprison the more potent of the Noblesse and to lay up the Kings Treasury for that cause it was well moated and strengthened with walls and draw Bridges very serviceable in those times It had the name of Louure quasi L'oeuure or the work the Building by way of excellencie An Etymologie which draweth nigher to the ear than the understanding or the eye And yet the French writers would make it a miracle Du Chesne calleth it superbe bastiment qui n' a son esgal en toute la Christiente and you shall hear it called in another place Bastiment qui passe muiourd huy en excellenee et en grandeur tous les autres Brave Eligies if all were Gold that glistered It hath given up now its charge of money and great prisoners to the Bastile and at this time serveth only to imprison the Court. In my life I never saw any thing more abused by a good report or that more belyeth the rumours that go of it The ordinary talk of vulgar travellers and the bigg words of the French had made me expect at the least some prodigie of Architecture some such Majestical house as the Sunne Don Phoebus is said to have dwelt in by Ovid. Regia solis erat sublimibus alta columnis Clara micante auro flammasque imitante pyropo Cuius ebur nitidum c. Indeed I thought no fiction in Poetry had been able to have parralell'd it and made no doubt but it would have put me into such a passion as to have cryed out with the young Gallant in the Comidie when he saw his Sweet heart Hei mihi qualis erat talis erat qualem nunquem ego vidi But I was much deceived in that hope and could find nothing in it to admire much less to envy The Fable of the Mountaine which was with child and brought forth a Mouse is questionless a Fable This House and the large fame it hath in the world is the Morall of it Never was there an House more unsuitable to it self in the particular examination of parts nor more unsutable to the Character and esteem of it in the general survey of the whole You enter into it over two Draw-bridges and thorough three Gates ruinous enough and abundantly unsightly In the Quadrangle you meet with three several fashions of buildings of three several ages and they so unhappily joyned one to the other that one would half beleeve they were clapped together by an Earthquake The South and West parts of it are new and indeed Prince like being the work of Francis the first and his Son Henry had it been all cast into the same mould I perswade my self that it would be very gratious and lovely The other two are of ancient work and so contemptible that they disgrace the rest and of these I suppose the one to be at the least a hundred years older than his partner such is it without As for the inside it is farre
posterity hath admired without envie To come home unto our selves the writers of the Romans mention the revolt of Britaines and the slaughter of 70000 Confederates to the Romans under the conduct of Vocudia and she in the beginning of her encouragements to the action telleth the people thus Solitum quidem Britannis foeminarum ductu bellare Of all these Heroicall Ladyes I read no accusation of witchcraft innative courage and a sense of injury being the armes they fought withall Neither can I see why the Romans should exceed us in modesty or that we need envie unto the French this one female Warriour when it is a fortune which hath befallen most nations As for her atchievements they are not so much beyond a common being but that they may be imputed to naturall meanes For had she been a Witch it is likely she would have prevented the disgrace which her valour suffered in the ditches of Paris though she could not avoid those of Champeigne who took her prisoner The Divell at such an exigent only being accustomed to forsake those which he hath intangled so that she enjoyed not such a perpetuity of faelicity as to entitle her to the Divells assistance she being sometimes conquerour sometimes overthrowne and at last imprisoned Communia fortune ludibria the ordinary sports of Fortune her actions before her March to Orleans having somewhat in them of cunning and perhaps of imposture as the Vision which she reported to have incited her to these attempts her finding out of the King disguised in the habit of a Countrey-man and her appointing to her selfe an old sword hanging in Saint Katharines Church in Tours The French were at this time meerly crâ—â—t-fallen not to be raised but by a miracle This therefore is invented and so that which of all the rest must prove her a sorceresse will onely prove her an impostor Gerrard seigneur de Haillan one of the best writers of France is of opinion that all that plot of her coming to the King was contrived by three Lords of the Court to hearten the people as if God now miraculously intended the restauration of the Kingdome Add to this that she never commanded in any battaile without the assistance of the best Captaines of the French Nation and amongst whom was the Bastard of Orleans who is thought to have put this device into her head The Lord Bellay in his discourse of Art Military proceedeth further and maketh her a man onely thus habited Pour fair revenir le courage aux Francois which had it been so would have been discovered at the time of her burning Other of the later French Writers for those of the former age savour too much of the Legend make her to be a lusty lasse of Lorreine trained up by the Bastard of Orleans and the Seigneur of Brandicourt only for this service that she might carry with her the reputation of a Prophetesse and an Ambassadresse from Heaven Admit this and farewell Witchcraft As for the sentence of her Condemnation and the confirmation of it by the Divines and Vniversity of Paris it is with me of no moment being composed onely to humour the Victor If this could sway me I had more reason to encline to the other party for when Charles had setled his estate the same man who had condemned her of Sorcery absolved her and there was also added in defence of her innocency a Decree from the Court of Rome Joane then with me shall inherit the title of La puelle d' Orleans with me she shall be ranked amongst the famous Captaines of her time and be placed in the same throne equall with the valiant'st of all her Sex in times before her Let those whom partiality hath wrested aside from the path of truth proclaime her for a Sorceress for my part I will not flatter the best Fortunes of my Countrey to the prejudice of a truth neither will I ever be induced to think of this female Warriour otherwise than as of a noble Captaine Audetque viris concurrere Virgo Penthesilea did it why not she Without the stain of Spells and Sorcery Why should those Arts in her be counted sin Which in the other have commended been Nor is it fit that France should be deny'd This Female Soldier since all Realms beside Have had the honour of one and relate How much that Sex hath ev'n forc'd the state Of their decaying strength let Scytha spare To speak of Tomyris the Assyrians care Shall be no more to have their deeds recited Of Ninus's wife nor are the Dutch delighted To have the name of their Velleda extoll'd the name Of this French Warriour hath eclips'd their fame And silenc'd their atchievements let the praise That 's due to Vertue wait upon her raise An Obelisk unto her you of Gaule And let her Acts live in the mouths of all Speak boldly of her and of her alone That never Lady was as good as Joane She dy'd a Virgin 't was because the earth Held not a man whose Vertues or whose Birth Might merit such a Blessing but above The Gods provided her a fitting Love And gave her to St. Denis she with him Protects the Lillies and their Diadem You then about whose Armies she doth watch Give her the honour due unto her Match And when in Field your Standard you advance Cry ' loud St. Denis and St. Joan for France CHAP. III. The study of the Civil Law received in Europe The dead time of Learning The Schoole of Law in Orleans The Oeconomie of them The Chancelour of Oxford anciently appointed by the Diocaesan there Method here and Prodigality in bestowing Degrees Orleans a great Conflux of Strangers The Language there The Corporation of Germaines there Their House and Privilege Dutch Latine The difference between an Academy and an University I Have now done with the Town and City of Orleans and am come to the Vniversity or Schooles of Law which are in it this being one of the first places in which the Study of the Civil Law was received in Europe for immediately after the death of Justinian who out of no lesse than two thousand volumes of Law-Writers had collected that body of the Imperiall Laws which we now call the Digest or the Pandects the study of them grew neglected in these Westerne parts nor did any for a long time professe or read them The reason was bâ—cause Italy France Spaine England and Germany having received new Lords over them as the Franks Lombards Saxons Sarcens and others were faine to submit themselves to their Lawes It happened afterwards that Lotharius Saxo the Emperour who began his Raigne Anno 1126 being 560 yeares after the death of Justinian having taken the City of Melphy in Naples found there an old Copy of the Pandects This he gave to the Pisans his Confederates as a most reverend relique of Learning and Antiquity whence it is called Litera pisana Moreover he founded the Vniversity of Bologne or Bononia ordaining the Civill